Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Ezekiel 43:10
Thou son of man, show the house to the house of Israel, that they may be ashamed of their iniquities: and let them measure the pattern.
10. ashamed of their iniquities ] i.e. in disregarding the ordinances of the Lord’s house, in defiling it ( Eze 43:7-8), and in committing its services to the hands of uncircumcised aliens (Eze 44:7), and the like.
measure the pattern ] LXX. has, “and its appearance and its pattern.” Cf. Eze 42:11, where “measures” and “appearance” were also interchanged.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
10 12. The prophet is commanded to shew to Israel the fashion and ordinances of the house that they may observe them.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Deviation from the exact rules of the Mosaic ordinances was connected with the transgression of the people. So the restoration, according to the pattern of the Law, was symbolic of their return to obedience.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Eze 43:10
Let them measure the pattern.
Measuring the pattern
A correct exhibition of Gods spiritual building was to be the means of awakening the Israelites to a sense of their own deficiencies. The prophet was to hold up the pattern showed in the mount, the temple as it existed in the excellence of its majesty, in order that measuring the present by the past, the national mind might be enlightened as to its true condition.
I. The principle here laid down, in its application to us as members of a national Church. Now there are two errors to which the human mind is prone in estimating moral progress, the one is that of overrating the present, the other that of clothing the past in unreal excellence. It is hard to say which of these forms of error is most injurious to healthy exertion. The man who casts unmixed scorn upon the attainments and practices of his forefathers; who will see nothing admirable in their habits of thought and feeling, is almost certain to end in being intolerant in his judgment, shallow and narrow minded in his counsels. And again, the man who is always taking the lowest view of the present, is almost equally sure to grow apathetic and idle. Now let us apply these thoughts to the state of our own part of Christs Catholic Church. Who has not himself come in contact with both the illusions of which we have spoken–the illusion of overrating and underrating the present? What is that will worship with which we have to struggle in reference to points of faith, but the offspring of the feeling that this generation is so wise and enlightened that it may safely cut asunder all the moorings which bind it to the past, and launch forth upon the dim waters of the future, with its own shrewdness and intellect as its sole pilot and guide? And contrariwise; we have in ourselves and in those who are actually sensible of the evils of the present, to guard against the imagination that the Church is now in a state of hopeless decay; that it is vain to bestir ourselves for a falling fabric; that the most which we can do is to assist in saving individual souls; but that the national disease is beyond the reach of the national Christianity. This latter error is, after all, perhaps the most injurious, because it is that to which the purest and most faithful souls are liable; and is, therefore, if allowed to have place, the greatest obstacle to improvement. And now what is the remedy for this two-fold temptation which we have described? Indeed the remedy is set forth in the text. That which has grown so important a duty for all, clergy and laity, is the duty of calmly, soberly, dispassionately reviewing our position, our advantages and disadvantages, our weaknesses and our strength. What the Church of Christ is, in its original ideal, as designed in the counsels of the Eternal mind; what the Church has been, at every stage of its long sojourn upon earth–the Church of revelation and the Church of history; how much it has ever been corrupted with worldly influences; how far it must concede to, at what point it must resist, the spirit of the age; to what degree it has been really successful in coercing human lusts; these are points most essential for us to form a definite conception of, if we would go forth to our labour with a good heart. Every century has its set task, every lifetime its own office in the majestic march of Gods designs. What if it be the very work of our generation, to certify them that come after; by our failures and discomfitures to acquire and deliver down a clearer knowledge of our standing before God than we received, and so to prepare the way for a revival of faith and obedience which others shall perfect. What if to us, especially in the very difficulties which beset us, in the very perplexities which we encounter, it be given to sweep clear the scene for nobler achievements, so that we may hear our peculiar vocation sketched out in the solemn charge: Thou son of man, shew the house, etc.
II. A striking declaration of our proper duties as priests of God. The charge is a charge to exhibit to the people the sacred edifice, to place before them the Church; and it is implied that the sight of the mystic structure will itself go far to make them ashamed of their own backslidings. Now we learn hence that it is one of our functions, each in his own parish, to exhibit the Church in all the integrity of its provisions for overcoming the world, with the belief that this showing it to the people will have a vast moral effect upon them. The carrying out of the Church system does not depend for its results upon the number of those who use the privileges offered; the simple exhibition of the Church in a parish is calculated to produce immense moral effect. The Church is a Divine instrument for regenerating the people. And the Church is known to the masses, not by definitions of theology, but by its perpetual worship, services, and sacraments, its fast days and festivals, its Lent and its Easter. And there is, we contend, in this Divine instrument fairly exhibited, a power over mens hearts which we are apt to forget. It was the loveliness of the Church catholic which bowed the hearts of the nations in her infancy. Amidst jarring idolatries, the Christian Church stood forth the fairest among ten thousand. It was not more by active preaching, than by the passive exhibition, so to speak, of Christianity as practised by themselves, that the old saints attracted to the Cross the barbarian tribes of ancient Europe. The melody of perpetual prayer and praise rung out through the aisles of primeval forests by night and day, in sweet accord with ascetic lives and heroic exertions, and the institution of practices which preternaturally harmonised with human need; and rough spirits yielded to the constraining Deity. And now, we are persuaded that there is no form of religion which so commends itself to mens hearts, which so enlists the affections, as the Church when thoroughly exhibited. Only in the Church will you find all things at once; the unwearied Litany, the high-wrought exhortation, the didactic catechising, the frequent commemoration of Christs death. Shew the house to the house of Israel. O! it is a noble burden here laid upon us. To be, each in his own parish, like Solomon the king. In quietness and stillness, in peace and gentleness, no sound of axe or hammer being heard, to make to rise up before our people, in all its unearthly beauty, the house of the Lord; to lead hungry souls through the mystic arcade of the seven pillars, and show them the feast of good things which wisdom has prepared; to point out the victories of faith which overcomes the world; the might of prayer which vanquishes God; the omnipotence of love which endureth all things; to cause that upon every cottage home shall rest the shadow of a holier building;–this is our office as doorkeepers of the house of the Lord. Suffer yet one word more. We may not forget that, in measuring the pattern of the Church, men will measure ourselves; how far, as individuals, we fall short of the mark. The people cannot see the house without seeing us who have the charge of it. Let us try, then, to inflame our own souls with the love of the house which we have to show. Whatever we have done, surely we may do more. (Bishop Woodford.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 10. Show the house to the house of Israel] Show them this holy house where the holy God dwells, that they may be ashamed of their iniquities. Their name, their profession, their temple, their religious services, all bound them to a holy life; all within them, all without them, should have been holiness unto the Lord. But alas! they have been bound by no ties, and they have sinned against all their obligations; nevertheless, let them measure the pattern, let them see the rule by which they should have walked, and let them measure themselves by this standard, and walk accordingly.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
Son of man; Ezekiel, who is called thus above eighty times in this book.
Show: he could not lay a model before their eye, but he could, and this is required, describe it to them in all the parts.
The house; temple, which he had seen, and exactly measured.
To the house of Israel; to the rulers, prophets, and priests especially, not excluding others.
That they may be ashamed of their iniquities; when they shall blush to see what glory their iniquities had ruined, how great losers they were by their sins: or else thus interpret the meaning of these things, And let the Jews know what a church God will erect among the Gentiles, that so the Jews may be ashamed of their iniquities, which provoked God to east them off, and to destroy their church and state.
Let them measure the pattern; as thou declarest let them write down, delineate all, and then compute the whole, that they may fully comprehend it.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
10. show the house . . . that theymay be ashamed of their iniquitiesWhen the spirituality of theChristian scheme is shown to men by the Holy Ghost, it makesthem “ashamed of their iniquities.”
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
Thou son of man, show the house,…. That is, the house the prophet had seen measured, its gates, courts, and all belonging to it; which he was at first bid to observe, that he might show it to others; the house that the glory of the Lord was now come into, and had filled; and which is no other than the Gospel church in its perfection and glory in the latter day. This the prophet, who is addressed under his usual character in this book, is bid to show “to the house of Israel”; either to the captives in Babylon, among whom he was, and to whom he often speaks in this book, being sent with a message to them: and this he is ordered to show them, both to comfort them in their present state, with a view of what would be hereafter; and to humble them, and bring them to a sense of their sins, and shame for them, which had brought them into the condition they were, and so greatly short of this happy one: or else to the Jews in the first times of the Gospel; the prophet representing the apostles of Christ, who delivered out the form of a Gospel church state to the believing ones, far superior to that they had been in, and into which they entered: or rather he represented the ministers of the word in the latter day, showing to the Christians of those times the order, worship, and discipline of a pure Gospel church, who have been greatly deficient in their observance of them; and which is the work and business of Gospel ministers to do, as well as to preach the doctrine of the Gospel:
that they may be ashamed of their iniquities; how far short they have come of the model of true Gospel churches, and of observing the order, and maintaining the ordinances, and keeping up the discipline of such churches; and when persons are brought to blush and be ashamed, it looks as if they had a true sight and sense of their mistakes, and of repentance for them:
and let them measure the pattern; that is, of the house, and what belongs to it; by which they will see their defects, and correct them; see Re 11:1.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
(10) Shew the house.This is still in vision; make known to the people the new Temple and its appointments, that, seeing Gods gracious purposes, they may repent of their evil doings.
Let them measure the pattern.That is, let them carefully consider and follow out the provisions God had made for their worship. (Comp. Heb. 8:5.) Exactness in the observance of all positive enactments is a necessary result of a desire to serve God.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
10-12. These verses prove that there was a deep symbolic meaning, which would be understood by those for whom Ezekiel wrote, in all these minute particulars. This picture of a perfectly holy worship was intended to bring the exiles to repentance. (Compare the method used in the book of Hebrews.) Principal Douglas ( Expository Times, May-July, 1898; compare also Godet, Studies in the Old Testament) points out that much of the deviation from the Levitical law by Ezekiel is due to the principle enunciated in Eze 43:12, that the whole limit should be most holy. For this reason the veil or door which in the tabernacle and in Solomon’s temple had separated the holy from the most holy place was removed, making the entire sanctuary most holy (compare Heb 9:7-11; Heb 10:19-23), and removing every barrier between God and his believing worshipers. So the altar, the chief thing in all the worship, becomes conspicuous for its height (Eze 43:13-17), and the laver and the brazen sea are omitted, for these are no longer needed when the holy purifying stream springs from the temple; so the censer and the incense become unimportant in the presence of the living cherubim, and the golden candlesticks and all the ancient golden ornaments cease to be necessary since the presence of Jehovah fills the house with splendor. The greater holiness of the temple and the presence of the divine glory explain, therefore, the main differences in ritual between Ezekiel and Leviticus; even the king becoming merely a “prince” before this supreme majesty.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
“You, son of man, show the house to the house of Israel, that they may be ashamed of their iniquities, and let them measure the pattern (or ‘the sum’).”
The details of the heavenly temple were to be explained to the exiles. The idea was that as they assessed the sum total of its significance (‘measure the sum’ – for the idea compare Eze 28:12) and recognised the holiness and perfection of the One against Whom they had been rebelling as it was revealed there, they would be ashamed of all their evil behaviour and idolatry.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
Eze 43:10. Shew the house, &c. Relate these things concerning the temple to the house, &c. See the next verse. Houbigant.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
Eze 43:10 Thou son of man, shew the house to the house of Israel, that they may be ashamed of their iniquities: and let them measure the pattern.
Ver. 10. Show the house. ] Heb., That house – sc., Which I have showed thee in visions; the idea of that temple which shall shortly be set up, its figure and dimensions.
That they may be ashamed.
And let them measure the pattern.
a Scholae Platonis haec fuit inscriptio, .
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
NASB (UPDATED) TEXT: Eze 43:10-12
10As for you, son of man, describe the temple to the house of Israel, that they may be ashamed of their iniquities; and let them measure the plan. 11If they are ashamed of all that they have done, make known to them the design of the house, its structure, its exits, its entrances, all its designs, all its statutes, and all its laws. And write it in their sight, so that they may observe its whole design and all its statutes and do them. 12This is the law of the house: its entire area on the top of the mountain all around shall be most holy. Behold, this is the law of the house.
Eze 43:10 This elaborate plan of the new temple was meant to
1. remind them of the Exodus (a detailed pattern from YHWH of a place of worship and its procedures, cf. Exodus 25-31)
2. cause them to repent (cf. Eze 6:9; Eze 16:61; Eze 16:63; Eze 20:43; Eze 36:31; Eze 43:11)
3. give them an opportunity for obedience (i.e., and do them, Eze 43:11)
Eze 43:11 Notice the parallelism between
1. design, BDB 849, KB 1017, only in this chapter, possibly drawing, plan, or form
2. statutes, BDB 349, cf. Eze 43:18, see Special Topic: Terms for God’s Revelation
3. laws, BDB 435, cf. Eze 43:12(twice), see Special Topic: Terms for God’s Revelation
YHWH is giving them a new temple (i.e., to build) and new procedures (i.e., to act on) to test their obedience. They failed the tabernacle test; they failed Solomon’s temple test; they will fail Zerubbabel’s and Herod’s tests also! Only after the new covenant of chapter 36 and the restoration of chapter 37 can Israel be obedient.
Fuente: You Can Understand the Bible: Study Guide Commentary Series by Bob Utley
Thou. Some codices, with Septuagint, Syriac, and, Vulgate, read “Thou therefore”. This is yet future, and involves the fulfilment of Eze 37, for Ezekiel and for the whole nation.
skew the house . . . let them measure. This will he the evidence, to the new nation, that all this prophecy, and Ezekiel’s part in it, is of Jehovah.
iniquities. Hebrew `avah. App-44.
pattern: or, plan, or arrangement.
goings out = the exits.
comings in the entrances.
forms = models, or visible forms. The word is found only in this verse. Hebrew text written “form”; but margin “for
laws. Hebrew text written “law”; but margin laws”. Some codices, with four early printed editions, read “laws” both in text and margin.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
show: Eze 40:4, Exo 25:40, 1Ch 28:11, 1Ch 28:19
that they: Eze 43:11, Eze 16:61, Eze 16:63, Eze 23:31, Eze 23:32, Rom 6:21
pattern: or, sum, or number
Reciprocal: Jos 22:28 – Behold 2Ch 30:15 – were ashamed Eze 44:5 – concerning Mic 3:8 – to declare
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Eze 43:10. Be ashamed of their iniquities is another passage that is both an admonition and a prediction. That they became ashamed of their record is indicated by the language in the 137th Psalm and Eze 37:11. This attitude is also very evident in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah which are a record of things after the captivity.
Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary
Eze 43:10. Show the house to the house of Israel, that they may be ashamed, &c. The prophet is here directed to show the measure and pattern of the house to the Jews, with a view to render them ashamed of their idolatries and other iniquities, which had provoked God to deprive them of the honour and happiness of his residence among them, and the benefit of his ordinances. It seems also, that this same draught and description of the house and its courts, &c., was to be laid before them, as a model for them to imitate, as far as they should be able, when they should return to their own country, and rebuild their temple. See Preliminary Observations to chap. 40.-48. But, as has been more than once intimated, the words may have a further view, and the model of Gods temple here set forth might be intended as a pattern of heavenly things, as Mosess was, Exo 25:40, and a type of that pure church, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, which we may hope God will in due time everywhere restore. And, in the mean season, it is the duty of all Christians, according to their ability, to inform themselves and others what is the pattern, form, and fashion of this true church of God, in order to reform all those deviations which have been made from it. Let them measure the pattern In order to build their new temple by it, when they shall return from captivity, as far as their abilities will reach. For the same purpose the prophet is commanded in the following verse to write it in their sight.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Eze 43:10-12. Ezekiel is then instructed to show his plan of the Temple to the people. The very sight of it is expected to inspire them with shame for their past; while, to preserve them from error in the days to come, further instructions are promised for the conduct of the service. Supreme sanctity is to attach to the entire summit of the Temple hill, no part of it being abandoned to any secular use whatever.
Fuente: Peake’s Commentary on the Bible
The Lord instructed Ezekiel to describe the temple that he had seen in his vision to the Israelites. It would so impress them with the glorious future that God intended to give them that they would feel ashamed of their iniquities. They should examine the plans of the future temple carefully because they would inspire obedience in the people. If the exiles responded positively to Ezekiel’s revelation, they should study the vision carefully and conform to the instructions that accompanied it. Ezekiel was about to receive information about what the Israelites should do. So far the vision dealt with what they would see.