The Day Atonements announced the cancellation of debts and a return to ancestral lands for all families of Israel, restoring the land and the people to an Eden purity where YHWH continued to dwell with them (see Blog 108). However, the kingdoms of Israel and Judah did not keep the land Sabbaths nor the Jubilees, except in the days of King Hezekiah. The poor were oppressed and not cared for until their cries reached up to the God of heaven’s realm. Israel’s ten tribes were taken captive by the Assyrians in 720 BC and never returned. Judah followed Israel in her whoredom, and even worse, they polluted the temple with the worship of abominable creatures of the underworld. Instead of representing God’s glorious life flowing out to the world, the Jews turned the holy temple into a means of corruption and death. The blood of the innocent cried out from the ground until YHWH’s judgment of destruction and exile fell upon them and the nations. How would the promises of life be fulfilled when YHWH’s Presence left the temple and His people were banished from their inheritance to serve their enemies in foreign lands?

One twenty-five-year-old priest, the son of Buzi, found himself exiled from sacred space and captive in Babylon at the beginning of his five-year training period to serve in the temple. He had been waiting in anticipation for the honor of attending YHWH within the portal linking the two realms. It came to pass in his thirtieth year, when Ezekiel¹ would have begun his twenty-year service, that he was by the River Khebar. The heavens opened, and he saw visions of God’s portable throne in the fifth year of King Jehoiachin’s captivity. It was there, not in Jerusalem’s temple, that God’s hand was upon him, and God’s Spirit entered him (Eze. 1:3). To him, YHWH gave His words to speak to the house of Israel as a watchman ten dated times, and so it was by the Spirit that Ezekiel acted out the siege and sword against Jerusalem as judgment on idolatrous Judah. At the end of Ezekiel’s priesthood service, at the beginning of the year on the tenth day,² YHWH gave him the vision of a restored Israel, the land, the priesthood, and the temple with a new prince. The temple complex measures with perfect proportions of squares horizontally and vertically with cubes symbolic of YHWH’s Presence. Ezekiel, the son of man, prophesied of YHWH’s covenant faithfulness to restore Israel with a new heart to walk in His ways, and there His Spirit would dwell.

The history of these times tells an intriguing story that ends with Ezekiel’s vision on the Day of Atonements. In 609 BC, Assyria fell to the Neo-Babylonian and Median Empires after Egypt allied with Assyria. Josiah died fighting against Egypt. Egypt’s Pharaoh Necho put Josiah’s son Jehoahaz in prison, imposed a tribute of silver and gold, and placed his other son Jehoiakim on the throne. This 608 BC event started Judah’s 70 years of foreign oppression and captivity. Nebuchadnezzar II began his reign in 605 BC after his father died and took all that belonged to the king of Egypt from the Book of Egypt to the River Euphrates during the reigns of Jehoiakim and his son Jehoiachin. In the eighth year of Nebuchadnezzar, 597 BC, he besieged Jerusalem and took captive the king and his household, the priests and officers, captains and mighty men, and all craftsmen, along with all the treasures of the king and the house of YHWH. Ezekiel was among those taken captive. In Nebuchadnezzar’s 19^th year, 586 BC, he burned Jerusalem and the Temple. Jerusalem and its temple, the place YHWH put His name, His eyes and heart, there forever, was no more (1Ki. 9:3, 29).

And YHWH said, “I will also remove Judah from My sight, as I have removed Israel, and will cast off this city Jerusalem which I have chosen, and the house of which I said, ‘My name shall be there.'” 2Ki. 23:26-27

In the twenty-fifth year of our captivity, at the beginning of the year, on the tenth day of the month, in the fourteenth year after the city was captured, on the very same day the hand of YHWH was upon me; and He took me there. 2 In the visions of God He took me into the land of Israel and set me on a very high mountain; on it toward the south was something like the structure of a city. 3 He took me there (Eze. 40:1-3)³.

Ezekiel’s last vision of his priesthood showed YHWH’s faithfulness to His covenant promises, depicted by a jubilee, King YHWH’s return to the land and a nation of priests purified by the Day of Atonements. A man with a measuring rod in his hand took Ezekiel on a hithallek (walk) through the new Eden, like the man with a gold reed measured the square, cubed new Jerusalem of John’s Revelation (Eze. 40:3; Rev. 21:15-16).⁴ The temple’s square proportions based on five and twenty-five⁵ lacked vertical measurements, except for the gatehouses, making it impossible for human hands to construct. The vertical measurements exist in the form of God’s Presence, symbolically presented as a cube, 5³, the city Abraham looked for whose maker and builder was God.⁶ Ezekiel’s vision of perfect proportions imaged the mobile new Eden of the new covenant, with the rivers of Spirit flowing out to all the earth through a holy people filled with His Spirit.

Takeaway:
The Book of Ezekiel shows God’s judgment falling on Israel and the nations. The hope of the promises appears in YHWH’s enthroned Presence with Ezekiel in exile and the Spirit moving. In Ezekiel’s Day of Atonements vision, a new Eden appears in a perfectly proportioned city, temple, and land with a new prince over a new nation of priests keeping the Torah, filled with His Spirit. In the midst is the altar, Yeshua’s atoning sacrifice, trumpeting the Jubilee on Yom haKippurim. With the defeat of evil in all the earth, a new creation is a reality by YHWH’s Presence, a portal between heaven and earth. Humanity’s restoration comes through worshiping only YHWH in holiness, from His atoning sacrifice that purifies the land, temple, and servants so that He may dwell with us.

Fun Factors:
“Five” occurs 27, 3², times in Ezekiel, and “twenty-five,” 5², occurs 25 times. A perfect power (a square), 25 is a powerful number representing God’s core essence, holiness. It is the sum of 3 + … + 7; 25 = 3² + 4², 25 = T₄ + T₅; the square root of 25 is 5; the product of its digits is 10, while the sum is 7; 25 is the 5^th square number, the 4^th centered square number, and the 3^rd centered octagonal number. Adding 25 to its reverse (52) is 77, and subtracting 25 from its reverse (52) is a cube, 27, 3³. Threes, fours, and sevens hover backstage of 25.

Ezekiel’s new temple vision happened in his 25^th year of captivity. Ezekiel’s father, Buzi, sums to 25. Chapter 40’s vision occurs 40 years from Israel’s 17^th Jubilee, 612 BC, and 9 years to the 18^th in 563 BC, and 25 years to the end of their 70-year captivity, 538 BC. Sacred temple area, terumah, was marked with 25. The Gatehouse entry width was 25 cubits by 2 × 25 cubits in length. One hundred (4 × 25) cubits measured from the inner gatehouse to the outer gatehouse (3 inner and 3 outer gates; 4 sides to the square temple and city, 4 kitchens, and 4 altar horns). The chamber length toward the outer court was 50, 2 × 25 cubits, and those along the court’s outer wall were 100 cubits, 4 × 25. The number of steps ascending to the inner court was 7 + 8 + 10 = 25. The temple complex was 500² cubits, 50 × 500, 2³ × 5⁵, or 50² + 150². Each side of the temple wall was 500 cubits, 4 × 5³, or 20 × 25, 10 × 50, 4² + 22², a jubilee times ten (calculated as 7² + 1² = 50). The entire land reserved for sacred space was 25000² cubits, 25² × 1000². The perimeter of Ezekiel’s city on the south was 18,000 cubits, 2⁴ × 3² × 5³ or 144 × 125, or 50 × 360, the sum of two squares 60² + 120², 3600 + 14400.