Ezekiel 45:9-18.
God’s word is meant for the conscience of the reader, though in this Book of Ezekiel it looks far onward from the time it was written to a time not yet come. So verses 9 to 12 were meant for Ezekiel’s day, but they will come freshly before the Israelites who enter the Millennium, and they have a message for us who now are privileged to read God’s Word.
The natural heart was the same when Ezekiel gave his prophecies as it is today—deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it? (Jeremiah 17:9) if this were not so, God would not have said it, and such as verses 9 to12 would not have been written.
The ephah was the Hebrew dry measure and the bath their liquid measure, each holding nearly six and a half gallons. The homer was equal to ten ephahs or ten baths; as a liquid measure it was also called a cor (as in verse 14). The maneh weighed two pounds and equaled 60 shekels (20 plus 25 plus 15).
In verse 13 we pass front the consideration of measures and weights in honest dealings with men to what is due to God. All the people are to bring an offering of wheat, barley and oil, and a lamb or young goat to make atonement for themselves. The sixth part is not without spiritual meaning, and as seven is a number used symbolically in the Scriptures for spiritual completeness, six appears to stand for incompleteness, imperfection; the blessedness of the Millennium will not be perfection. That belongs to eternity, the eternal state. In the institution of the offerings, in Leviticus 1 to 7 there is no mention of a sixth part; it would be out of place, for there they point directly to Christ in His death and in. His matchless life.
It will be the prince’s part (he who will rule Israel for the Lord Jesus) to supply the burnt offerings, the meat offerings and drink offerings at the feasts, at the new moons and on the sabbaths in all the solemnities of the house of Israel. He also is to prepare the four offerings to make reconciliation (atonement) for the house of Israel (verse 17).
ML 04/12/1936