Context at a Glance
Author:Traditional Attribution
Topic:ezekiel Chapter 48 Study
This chapter provides a foundational look at the theological themes of ezekiel, analyzed across multiple historic translations for maximum scholarly depth.
Ezekiel 48
New Revised Standard Version
1These are the names of the tribes: Beginning at the northern border, on the Hethlon road, from Lebo-hamath, as far as Hazar-enon (which is on the border of Damascus, with Hamath to the north), and extending from the east side to the west, Dan, one portion.
2Adjoining the territory of Dan, from the east side to the west, Asher, one portion.
3Adjoining the territory of Asher, from the east side to the west, Naphtali, one portion.
4Adjoining the territory of Naphtali, from the east side to the west, Manasseh, one portion.
5Adjoining the territory of Manasseh, from the east side to the west, Ephraim, one portion.
6Adjoining the territory of Ephraim, from the east side to the west, Reuben, one portion.
7Adjoining the territory of Reuben, from the east side to the west, Judah, one portion.
8Adjoining the territory of Judah, from the east side to the west, shall be the portion that you shall set apart, twenty-five thousand cubits in width, and in length equal to one of the tribal portions, from the east side to the west, with the sanctuary in the middle of it.
9The portion that you shall set apart for the LORD shall be twenty-five thousand cubits in length, and twenty thousand in width.
10These shall be the allotments of the holy portion: the priests shall have an allotment measuring twenty-five thousand cubits on the northern side, ten thousand cubits in width on the western side, ten thousand in width on the eastern side, and twenty-five thousand in length on the southern side, with the sanctuary of the LORD in the middle of it.
11This shall be for the consecrated priests, the descendants of Zadok, who kept my charge, who did not go astray when the people of Israel went astray, as the Levites did.
12It shall belong to them as a special portion from the holy portion of the land, a most holy place, adjoining the territory of the Levites.
13Alongside the territory of the priests, the Levites shall have an allotment twenty-five thousand cubits in length and ten thousand in width. The whole length shall be twenty-five thousand cubits and the width twenty thousand.
14They shall not sell or exchange any of it; they shall not transfer this choice portion of the land, for it is holy to the LORD.
15The remainder, five thousand cubits in width and twenty-five thousand in length, shall be for ordinary use for the city, for dwellings and for open country. In the middle of it shall be the city;
16and these shall be its dimensions: the north side four thousand five hundred cubits, the south side four thousand five hundred, the east side four thousand five hundred, and the west side four thousand five hundred.
17The city shall have open land: on the north two hundred fifty cubits, on the south two hundred fifty, on the east two hundred fifty, on the west two hundred fifty.
18The remainder of the length alongside the holy portion shall be ten thousand cubits to the east, and ten thousand to the west, and it shall be alongside the holy portion. Its produce shall be food for the workers of the city.
19The workers of the city, from all the tribes of Israel, shall cultivate it.
20The whole portion that you shall set apart shall be twenty-five thousand cubits square, that is, the holy portion together with the property of the city.
21What remains on both sides of the holy portion and of the property of the city shall belong to the prince. Extending from the twenty-five thousand cubits of the holy portion to the east border, and westward from the twenty-five thousand cubits to the west border, parallel to the tribal portions, it shall belong to the prince. The holy portion with the sanctuary of the temple in the middle of it,
22and the property of the Levites and of the city, shall be in the middle of that which belongs to the prince. The portion of the prince shall lie between the territory of Judah and the territory of Benjamin.
23As for the rest of the tribes: from the east side to the west, Benjamin, one portion.
24Adjoining the territory of Benjamin, from the east side to the west, Simeon, one portion.
25Adjoining the territory of Simeon, from the east side to the west, Issachar, one portion.
26Adjoining the territory of Issachar, from the east side to the west, Zebulun, one portion.
27Adjoining the territory of Zebulun, from the east side to the west, Gad, one portion.
28And adjoining the territory of Gad to the south, the boundary shall run from Tamar to the waters of Meribath-kadesh, from there along the Wadi of Egypt to the Great Sea.
29This is the land that you shall allot as an inheritance among the tribes of Israel, and these are their portions, says the Lord GOD. The new Jerusalem
30These shall be the exits of the city: On the north side, which is to be four thousand five hundred cubits by measure,
31three gates, the gate of Reuben, the gate of Judah, and the gate of Levi, the gates of the city being named after the tribes of Israel.
32On the east side, which is to be four thousand five hundred cubits, three gates, the gate of Joseph, the gate of Benjamin, and the gate of Dan.
33On the south side, which is to be four thousand five hundred cubits by measure, three gates, the gate of Simeon, the gate of Issachar, and the gate of Zebulun.
34On the west side, which is to be four thousand five hundred cubits, three gates, the gate of Gad, the gate of Asher, and the gate of Naphtali.
35The circumference of the city shall be eighteen thousand cubits. And the name of the city from that time on shall be, The LORD is There. DANIEL
1754DANIEL Introduction The book of Daniel combines the humor of folktale with the mystery of apocalyptic to create a message of hope and encouragement. Daniel himself is as much a mystery as the symbols in the book that bears his name: The earliest reference to a figure named Daniel is that of a Ugaritic king who lived in the fourteenth century BCE. Ezekiel 14.14 associates this king with Noah and Job: three non-Jewish individuals known for belief in the face of danger, wisdom in the face of foolishness. According to Ezek 28.3, Daniel is one who knows secrets. The Daniel of this prophetic book is similar in knowledge, fidelity, and circumstances; he is, however, emphatically Jewish. Blending theological emphasis on personal piety and divine intervention with staples of folktales such as wise courtiers, endangered heroes, and foolish kings, the first six chapters entertain and edify even as they provide encouragement to Jews living as a minority under foreign rule. The accounts of Daniel and his friends, Jewish youths taken into Babylonian captivity, reflect a time in which the imperial rule is ignorant and often dangerous rather than malevolent, and in which Jews can live at peace with their non-Jewish neighbors, though perhaps not with a complete sense of security. Consequently, the tales are most often regarded as products of the Persian (539-333 BCE) or early Hellenistic (333-168) periods. Like Joseph, Daniel succeeds in service to the ruler through his ability to interpret dreams; like Mordecai in the book of Esther, he succeeds in foreign political service despite challenges by rival politicians. These stories contrast with the apocalyptic materials in 7-12, which depict extreme hostility to foreign governments and which underscore ongoing universal tribulation rather than temporary personal danger. In this second section, Daniel is not the interpreter of visions but the DANIEL
1755visionary himself, and he is now in need of an angel's interpretive skills. In a series of dreams, he learns of the history of the Near East and Egypt from the Babylonian Empire, through Persian rule, to the time of Alexander the Great, and finally to the attacks against Judaism and Jerusalem by the Syrian-Greek ruler Antiochus IV Epiphanes. The increasingly detailed descriptions of the period following the division of Alexander's empire up to the Hellenization crisis under Antiochus in
167BCE suggest that the apocalyptic sections were composed on the eve of the Maccabean revolt against the assimilationist policies of Antiochus and his allies in Jerusalem's priestly circles (see
1Macc 1). The author may well have been one of the "wise men" who promulgated a counsel of nonviolence together with the expectation that God would punish the wicked and redeem the faithful (Dan 12.3). That the visions are presented pseudonymously, that is, under the name of an ancient figure who "foresees" what is to come, is typical of apocalypses (so also for
2Esdras,
2Baruch, and later Christian texts such as the 'Apocalypse of Peter'). Daniel 2.4b-7.28 is written in Aramaic, the common language of the Near East from the time of the Babylonian exile until the conquests of Alexander the Great; 1.1-2.4a and chs 8-12 are in Hebrew, which by then for the Jews had become largely the language of worship, not of ordinary discourse. Complicating the linguistic history of the volume are the Septuagint and Old Greek translations. These texts contain additions to the story of Daniel: The Prayer of Azariah and the Song of the Three Jews, Susanna, and Bel and the Dragon. In this bible these additional texts appear in the Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical Books. Still more books within the Danielic corpus appear among the documents discovered in
1948at Qumran, the so-called Dead Sea Scrolls. One text, the Prayer of Nabonidus (4QprNab), may represent an earlier version of Dan 4; that Nabonidus engaged in erratic behavior, and that he rather than Nebuchadnezzar was the father of Belshazzar (Dan 5.1) make this supposition particularly intriguing. The wisdom of the Jewish courtiers in negotiating the difficulties of living under an often arbitrary and dangerous foreign rule is juxtaposed with a vision of wars, persecutions, and finally, salvation under God's sovereignty; through these images the book of Daniel DANIEL
1756offers to its readers both advice and consolation. The folktales speak to all peoples persecuted as religious and ethnic minorities, especially under conditions of colonial rule. The apocalyptic materials, whose meanings would have been known to the author's own circle, have provided for over two thousand years occasion for speculation and, often, hope.