Prophecy in Ezekiel

“…upon this likeness of a throne was seated, up above, a figure that looked like a human being.” (1:26)

Reading

In a storm from the north Ezekiel sees four living creatures, each with the face of a human being, a lion, an ox and an eagle (1:10), wheels full of eyes, a crystal firmament, and above it a throne. On the throne is a figure of fire and light, ringed with brilliance like a rainbow: “Such was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the LORD” (1:28). The prophet piles up “likeness” and “appearance” because what he sees cannot be described directly. The great point is that God's glory is not confined to the Temple in Jerusalem; it comes to his people in exile.

Fulfilled

The figure “that looked like a human being” on the throne is the Old Testament's boldest glimpse of God showing himself in human likeness. The Church sees its full answer in the Word made flesh, “the image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15).

Future

John sees the same throne room: “A throne was there in heaven,” with a halo “as brilliant as an emerald,” a “sea of glass like crystal,” and four living creatures like a lion, a calf, a human being and an eagle, crying “Holy, holy, holy” (Revelation 4:2–8). The Catechism reads Revelation 4 together with this chapter (cf. Ezekiel 1:26–28) in describing the heavenly liturgy, and says the four living beings stand for all creation in its praise (CCC 1137–1138).

Note

From St. Irenaeus on, the Fathers saw in the four faces a figure of the four Gospels (Against Heresies 3.11.8). The pairing now familiar in Christian art, the man for Matthew, the lion for Mark, the ox for Luke and the eagle for John, is St. Jerome's. This is a spiritual reading, not the literal sense.

“…mark an X on the foreheads of those who grieve and lament over all the abominations practiced within it.” (9:4)

Reading

Before judgment falls on Jerusalem, a man clothed in linen goes through the city marking those who mourn its sins. The executioners are told: “But do not touch anyone marked with the X” (9:6). The NABRE note explains that the mark is literally the Hebrew letter taw, the last letter of the alphabet, which in the old script was written as a cross or an X. God knows his own, and judgment does not sweep away the innocent with the guilty.

Fulfilled

The Fathers saw in the taw a figure of the sign of the cross traced on the foreheads of the baptized (Tertullian, Against Marcion 3.22). The Church still signs the forehead with the cross at Baptism and Confirmation.

Future

Revelation takes up the scene: before the winds of judgment are released, the servants of God are sealed on their foreheads (Revelation 7:2–4; 9:4). The NABRE note there says that the elect receive “the seal of the living God as protection against the coming cataclysm.” At the end, the mark becomes a name: “his name will be on their foreheads” (Revelation 22:4). The counterfeit is the mark of the beast (Revelation 13:16).

“Then the glory of the LORD left the threshold of the temple and took its place upon the cherubim.” (10:18)

Reading

Because of the idolatry practiced in the Temple (chapter 8), Ezekiel watches the glory of the LORD leave it in stages: from the threshold, to the eastern gate (10:19), and on to the mountain east of the city (11:23). Only then does Jerusalem fall. Years later, in his vision of the new temple, he sees the reverse: “The glory of the LORD entered the temple by way of the gate facing east” (43:4), and he hears, “Here I will dwell among the Israelites forever” (43:7).

Fulfilled

The glory returned in a way Ezekiel could not foresee. The Word became flesh and “made his dwelling among us, and we saw his glory” (John 1:14). Jesus calls his own body the temple (John 2:19–21), and from the Mount of Olives, east of the city, he ascends (Acts 1:12). See The Temple of His Body.

Future

The promise “forever” is completed in the new Jerusalem, where God dwells with his people for good (Revelation 21:3).

“Look! I myself will search for my sheep and examine them.” (34:11)

Reading

Israel's rulers have fed themselves instead of the flock (34:1–10). So God promises to do the shepherding himself: “The lost I will search out, the strays I will bring back, the injured I will bind up, and the sick I will heal” (34:16). Then, strikingly, he promises a single human shepherd as well: “I will appoint one shepherd over them to pasture them, my servant David” (34:23). God will shepherd, and David will shepherd. The promise is renewed in 37:24: “they shall all have one shepherd.”

Fulfilled

Jesus answers both halves at once: “I am the good shepherd. A good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep” (John 10:11). He is the Son of David and God come in person to seek the lost (Luke 15:4–7; 19:10). He goes further than the prophet: “there will be one flock, one shepherd” (John 10:16), gathering sheep from beyond Israel. The Catechism cites this chapter when it calls the Church a sheepfold whose one gate is Christ, and God the shepherd of the flock (CCC 754).

Unfolding

Christ still shepherds his people through the pastors he gives the Church (John 21:15–17; 1 Peter 5:2–4), and Ezekiel's warning to shepherds who neglect the flock still stands. In Revelation the Lamb himself becomes shepherd, leading his own “to springs of life-giving water” (Revelation 7:17).

“I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you.” (36:26)

Reading

God promises to gather his scattered people, and then to do what they could never do for themselves: “I will sprinkle clean water over you to make you clean” (36:25), and “I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh” (36:26). The new obedience is God's own gift: “I will put my spirit within you so that you walk in my statutes” (36:27). It is the same hope as Jeremiah's new covenant (Jeremiah 31:31–34).

Fulfilled

Clean water and the Spirit come together in Baptism: Jesus speaks of being “born of water and Spirit” (John 3:5), and Paul of “the bath of rebirth and renewal by the holy Spirit” (Titus 3:5). The Catechism names this passage among the prophetic texts that promise the Spirit, who at the “end time” will renew human hearts and engrave a new law in them (CCC 715). The Church reads it at the Easter Vigil, before the baptisms.

Unfolding

The heart of stone is replaced once in Baptism and then, all through a Christian life, slowly worn away by grace.

See also

Ezekiel 11:19; Acts 2:38; Titus 3:4–7.

“Son of man, can these bones come back to life?” “Lord GOD,” I answered, “you alone know that.” (37:3)

Reading

The exiles said, “Our bones are dried up, our hope is lost” (37:11). Ezekiel is set down in a valley full of bones and told: “Dry bones, hear the word of the LORD!” (37:4). Bones join, flesh covers them, and at the prophet's word “the breath entered them; they came to life and stood on their feet, a vast army” (37:10). The vision's first meaning is given in the text itself: God will bring his people home from exile as if from the grave. “I am going to open your graves” (37:12).

Fulfilled

The breath of 37:9 is the same word as spirit. The Catechism lists this vision among the promises of the Spirit who gives life (CCC 715), and the Church reads it at the Vigil of Pentecost, when the risen Christ breathes his Spirit into the Church (John 20:22). On the Fifth Sunday of Lent (Year A) it is read with the raising of Lazarus.

Future

Already the Fathers read the vision also as a figure of the resurrection of the body (Tertullian, On the Resurrection of the Flesh 29–30). Jesus promises that “the hour is coming in which all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and will come out” (John 5:28–29).

“This gate must remain closed; it must not be opened, and no one should come through it. Because the LORD, the God of Israel, came through it, it must remain closed.” (44:2)

Reading

In its first sense the closed gate honors the way by which the glory of the LORD returned to his temple (43:1–4). Where God has passed, no one else may pass; only the prince may sit there to eat “in the presence of the LORD” (44:3).

The Fathers' reading

Many Fathers read the gate as a figure of the Virgin Mary: the LORD entered the world through her and she remained a virgin. St. Ambrose asks what this gate is if not Mary (On the Training of a Virgin 8.52), and St. Jerome reads it the same way (Commentary on Ezekiel, on 44:1–3). The image passed into the Church's hymns and prayers, where Mary is greeted as the gate of heaven.

Note

This is a spiritual reading handed down by the Fathers, not the literal sense of the passage, and the Church has not defined it as the meaning of the verse. What it illustrates is defined faith: Mary's real and perpetual virginity (CCC 499).

“…there! I saw water flowing out from under the threshold of the temple toward the east…” (47:1)

Reading

On “a very high mountain” (40:2), a man “whose appearance was like bronze,” holding a measuring rod (40:3), leads Ezekiel through a new temple and measures it. Then a trickle comes out from under the temple, and with each thousand cubits it grows until “it was a river I could not wade across” (47:5). It flows down to the Dead Sea and makes it fresh: “Wherever it flows, the river teems with every kind of living creature” (47:9). On its banks grow trees whose fruit never fails and whose leaves are “for healing” (47:12). The temple has become a source of life for the whole land.

Fulfilled

Jesus, standing in the Temple at the feast of Tabernacles, applies the image to himself and the Spirit: “Rivers of living water will flow from within him” (John 7:38–39). From his side on the Cross flow blood and water (John 19:34). In Eastertide the Church sings the Vidi aquam at the sprinkling of water, an antiphon built on this verse, reading Ezekiel's river as Baptism flowing from the risen Christ.

Unfolding

The Catechism calls the Holy Spirit “the living water welling up from Christ crucified as its source” (CCC 694). The river keeps rising wherever the Church baptizes and the Spirit gives life.

Future

John sees the river at the end: “the river of life-giving water, sparkling like crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb,” with the tree of life on either side whose leaves “serve as medicine for the nations” (Revelation 22:1–2). The Catechism calls this river one of the most beautiful symbols of the Holy Spirit (CCC 1137). In the new Jerusalem there is no separate temple at all, “for its temple is the Lord God almighty and the Lamb” (Revelation 21:22).

Note

Some readers expect a literal rebuilding of Ezekiel's temple. The New Testament reads the vision as fulfilled in Christ and his Body, and completed in the city where God himself is the temple.