Ezekiel 44

The tour that has filled the preceding chapters with measurements pauses at a single closed door, and the silence around it is loud. Then he brought me back the way of the gate of the outward sanctuary which looketh toward the east; and it was shut (v. 1). This is the gate that faces the rising sun - and the direction is not incidental, for earlier in the book the glory of the LORD had come from the way of the east to fill the house. Now the prophet is told plainly why the gate is closed: This gate shall be shut… because the LORD, the God of Israel, hath entered in by it (v. 2). Read quickly, a shut gate sounds like exclusion, a door barred against people. But the reason given turns it the other way around. The gate is shut not because something is wrong with it but because something has happened to it: the glory of God has passed through. A threshold the LORD Himself has crossed is no longer available for ordinary coming and going. It has been set apart by His passing. The closing is an act of honour, not of judgment - the way you would not let muddy boots tramp where a king has walked.³

One exception is named, and it is carefully bounded: It is for the prince; the prince, he shall sit in it to eat bread before the LORD; he shall enter by the way of the porch of that gate, and shall go out by the way of the same (v. 3). The prince does not pass through the shut gate as if it were an open road; he comes by the side, through the porch, and there sits to eat before the LORD. Even the highest figure in the renewed community approaches the holy with restraint. The eating of bread before the LORD is the language of fellowship - a shared meal in God's presence, the sign of a restored relationship - and yet it happens at the edge of what the glory has consecrated, not in careless trespass of it. The picture holds two things together that the whole chapter will keep holding together: nearness and reverence. There is real fellowship with God here, real bread eaten in His presence; and there is real holiness that even the prince does not presume upon. The shut gate stands between them as a constant teacher: God draws His people near, and God remains holy, and neither truth cancels the other.

Before a single rule is given, the prophet is shown the reason every rule matters: I looked, and, behold, the glory of the LORD filled the house of the LORD: and I fell upon my face (v. 4). The ordinances that follow are not arbitrary fences; they are the fitting response to a house full of glory. And the LORD's first command is about attention: Son of man, mark well, and behold with thine eyes, and hear with thine ears all that I say unto thee… and mark well the entering in of the house, with every going forth of the sanctuary (v. 5). The phrase mark well sounds twice, framing the charge - literally, set your heart upon it. Who comes in and who goes out of God's house is not a small administrative matter to be handled loosely; it is something to fix the heart upon. The prophet falls on his face at the sight of the glory and is then told to pay the closest possible attention to how that glory's dwelling is approached. The two go together. People who have truly seen the holiness of God do not grow casual about the door of His house; awe makes them careful. The command to mark well is what reverence looks like once it gets up off its face and goes to work.

Then the word turns sharp. The prophet is sent to the rebellious, even to the house of Israel, with a charge from the Lord GOD: let it suffice you of all your abominations (v. 6) - enough; let there be an end of it. The specific failure is named: ye have brought into my sanctuary strangers, uncircumcised in heart, and uncircumcised in flesh… to pollute it, even my house, when ye offer my bread (v. 7). The holiest place had been treated as though anyone might wander in and handle the things of God, regardless of whether their hearts were turned to Him at all. And the deeper charge is one of stewardship: ye have not kept the charge of mine holy things: but ye have set keepers of my charge in my sanctuary for yourselves (v. 8). The trust had been theirs to guard, and they had farmed it out, arranging God's house to suit themselves. The verdict is plain: No stranger, uncircumcised in heart, nor uncircumcised in flesh, shall enter into my sanctuary (v. 9). What stands out is the order of the two phrases - uncircumcised in heart comes first, before uncircumcised in flesh. The outward mark was never the point; an unturned heart was always the real disqualification. The sanctuary had been profaned less by the wrong bodies than by the wrong hearts being brought carelessly near to holy things.

The chapter now sorts those who serve, and it does so by a single question: where were they when the nation went astray? First the verdict on those who drifted: the Levites that are gone away far from me, when Israel went astray… after their idols; they shall even bear their iniquity (v. 10). The reason is given without flinching - they ministered unto them before their idols, and caused the house of Israel to fall into iniquity (v. 12). These were not bystanders; they had led others wrong, lending the weight of their office to false worship. The consequence is real and specific: they shall not come near unto me, to do the office of a priest… nor to come near to any of my holy things, in the most holy place (v. 13). The nearest access is withdrawn. And yet - this is the striking thing - they are not cast out. Yet they shall be ministers in my sanctuary, having charge at the gates of the house (v. 11); I will make them keepers of the charge of the house (v. 14). There is still a place for them, still real service to do, still a belonging in the renewed community. The unfaithful are not destroyed; they are restricted from the closest approach. Judgment and mercy stand here in the same breath: the drifting has true and lasting consequences, and there is still room, still work, still a door not slammed.

Over against the drifters stands one faithful line: But the priests the Levites, the sons of Zadok, that kept the charge of my sanctuary when the children of Israel went astray from me, they shall come near to me to minister unto me (v. 15). Everything turns on that one clause - that kept the charge… when the children of Israel went astray. While the nation as a whole drifted into idols, this house kept its post. They did the right thing in a season when the right thing was unpopular, unrewarded, perhaps lonely. And their reward is described in the most precious terms the chapter has: they come near. The very access denied to the unfaithful in verse 13 is granted to them here - they shall stand before me… They shall enter into my sanctuary, and they shall come near to my table, to minister unto me (vv. 15-16). Notice that the reward of faithful service is not ease or honour or wealth; it is nearness to God. The faithful are drawn closer in. This is the deep pattern the chapter is teaching through all its ordinances: holding fast when others fall away is seen by God, remembered by God, and answered by God with the one thing most worth having - to be brought near to Him. What the faithful kept was a charge; what they receive is a place at the LORD's own table.

The ordinances that follow all bend toward one aim: that those who serve would be visibly, bodily set apart for the holy. They wear linen garments in the inner court, and no wool shall come upon them (v. 17), with linen bonnets and linen breeches, nothing that causeth sweat (v. 18) - plain, clean, fitting for nearness to God rather than for display. They change out of those garments before they go out to the people (v. 19), keeping what is holy from being worn carelessly into common life. Their grooming is to be moderate, neither shaven nor unkempt but simply polled (v. 20). They are not to drink wine when they enter the inner court (v. 21) - the mind that handles holy things is to be clear, unclouded, fully present. Their marriages are guarded (v. 22); their contact with the dead is limited, with tender exceptions made for the closest family (v. 25); and a cleansing is reckoned before they return to serve (vv. 26-27). Read as a list, these can look like a wall of restrictions. Read in light of the glory that fills the house, they are something else: the shape that a life takes when it is given over to handling what is holy. The restrictions are not the point; the holiness they serve is the point. To draw near to God is to be marked, in body and habit and appetite, by that nearness.

At the center of the priests' charge stands a task larger than the rituals around it: they shall teach my people the difference between the holy and profane, and cause them to discern between the unclean and the clean (v. 23). Their calling is not only to perform the holy things but to teach the people how to tell holy from common, clean from unclean - to train discernment in others. And it goes further: in controversy they shall stand in judgment; and they shall judge it according to my judgments… and they shall hallow my sabbaths (v. 24). They settle disputes by God's law, not their own preference, and they keep the rhythms God has set apart. The reason this matters reaches far past the temple. A people who can no longer tell the holy from the profane drift; the line blurs, the common creeps in where the holy belongs, and what God set apart gets worn down without anyone noticing the loss. So the work of teaching the difference is the work of guarding the whole community's sense of God. To discern between the unclean and the clean is a learned thing, not an instinct - which is why it has to be taught, and why the New Testament still speaks of the mature as those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil (Heb. 5:14). Someone has to keep teaching the difference, or it is forgotten.

Then the chapter says the thing it has been climbing toward, and it is breathtaking in its plainness. To those who serve, God assigns no land, no estate, no holding of their own - and explains why: And it shall be unto them for an inheritance: I am their inheritance: and ye shall give them no possession in Israel: I am their possession (v. 28). Everyone else in Israel would receive a portion of the land; the ones who serve at the altar receive something else entirely. They get God. Their provision came from the offerings - they shall eat the meat offering, and the sin offering… every dedicated thing in Israel shall be theirs (v. 29), the first of all the firstfruits (v. 30) - but their inheritance, the deep thing that defines them, is not acreage or wealth. It is the LORD Himself. This is the most radical trust the chapter asks: to hold no earthly security and to call God your security; to own no portion of the land and to say the Maker of the land is your portion. The line lands with such force because it inverts what everyone assumes makes a life safe. The world measures inheritance in property; here the highest inheritance is a Person. And the verse is repeated, as if to make sure it is not missed: I am their inheritance… I am their possession. What they were denied in land they were given back, immeasurably, in God.