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Ezekiel, part 18, A New Temple Site

Ezekiel 5:11 says,

¹¹ “So as I live,” declares the Lord God, “surely, because you have defiled My sanctuary with all your detestable idols and with all your abominations, therefore I will also withdraw, and My eye will have no pity and I will not spare.”

Ezekiel 5:11 identifies the central offense behind Jerusalem’s judgment: the people had defiled the sanctuary where God had placed His name. “As I live” makes this a solemn divine oath. God pledges the certainty of the judgment by His own life. Jerusalem’s inhabitants might dismiss Ezekiel’s warnings, but their disbelief could not cancel the sentence. Keep in mind, of course, that few people would have agreed with God. Ezekiel was a notable exception.

“You have defiled My sanctuary” explains why the temple would not protect them. They treated the sanctuary as a guarantee of security while violating the holiness it represented. God calls it “My sanctuary”: it had been built according to the pattern that God had given David (1 Chronicles 28:19), and its use remained subject to His authority.

Ezekiel 8 later supplies a fuller picture of this defilement, describing idolatrous images and worship within the temple precincts. The offense was especially serious because the people brought rival worship into the very place appointed for fellowship with God. Religious activity continued, but it contradicted the sanctuary’s purpose.

“Therefore I will also withdraw” expresses the corresponding judgment. They had defiled His dwelling; He would withdraw His protecting presence. Ezekiel 10–11 portrays this visibly as the glory of God departs from the temple and then from the city. The building could remain standing for a time, but without His presence it could not provide the security they assumed.

“My eye will have no pity and I will not spare” means that compassion would no longer suspend the announced sentence. The following verse specifies its execution through famine, plague, the sword, and scattering. This is a declaration concerning that judgment, rather than a statement that God would never again show mercy. His later promises of gathering and cleansing under Christ and His New Covenant remain.

The verse establishes a principle: God’s presence cannot be secured by maintaining a sacred institution while corrupting it through the “dung” of the traditions of men. Jerusalem needed the cleansing and inward renewal that God would later promise—a new heart and His Spirit within His people (Ezekiel 36:25–27).

Jesus’ cleansing of the temple in John 2:15 and again in Mark 11:15 confronts the same dung fest as in Ezekiel 5:11. The people claimed the privileges of God’s house while defiling its purpose, especially by profiteering in the sale of sacrificial animals and doves.

The Robbers’ Den

Jesus explained His action by quoting Jeremiah in Matthew 21:13,

¹³ … It is written, “My house shall be called a house of prayer”; but you are making it a robbers’ den.

He was referring primarily to Jeremiah 7:11,

¹¹ Is this house, which is called by My name, become a den of robbers in your sight?...

A den is where robbers retreat for safety, thinking that they are free to violate the law. Jeremiah condemned people who stole, murdered, committed adultery, and worshiped other gods, then entered the temple assuming they were secure (Jeremiah 7:9–10). Their confidence in the building concealed their need for repentance.

That is also Ezekiel’s point. A defiled sanctuary cannot guarantee protection from the God whose holiness it violates. Jeremiah 7:14, 15 then prophesied the result of turning the temple into a robber’s den,

¹⁴ Therefore, I will do to the house which is called by My name, in which you trust, and to the placed which I gave you and fathers, as I did to Shiloh. ¹⁵ I will cast you out of My sight, as I have cast out all your brothers, all the offspring of Ephraim.

This was a reference to the corruption of Eli and his sons at the tabernacle in Shiloh, which was located in the territory of Ephraim. At that time, the glory/ark of God abandoned Shiloh (1 Samuel 4:22), never again to return. It eventually moved to Jerusalem (in Solomon’s temple) to give the tribe of Judah the same opportunity that Ephraim had been given earlier.

However, Jerusalem, like Shiloh, defiled the temple, causing the glory of God to leave that place as well. As the prophet will tell us later in Ezekiel 11:23, God’s glory left the temple and moved to the Mount of Olives. Centuries later, Jesus, embodying the glory of God, ascended to heaven from the Mount of Olives, and ten days later sent the glory to the disciples in the upper room on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2:1-3).

Jesus later declared in Matthew 23:38, “Behold, your house is being left to you desolate!” He then departed from the temple and announced its destruction (Matthew 24:1, 2). The narrative recalls Ezekiel’s pattern: sanctuary defiled, divine presence withdrawn, and judgment.

This began a new era, where the glory of God began to dwell in us. We are the temple of God, and because Jerusalem was forsaken like Shiloh, His glory will never again return to a temple made by hands in Jerusalem.

The Desolate Temple of Jerusalem

Ezekiel 5:12-14 says,

¹² One third of you will die by plague or be consumed by famine among you, one third will fall by the sword around you, and one third I will scatter to the wind, and I will unsheathe a sword behind them. ¹³ Thus My anger will be spent and I will satisfy My wrath on them, and I will be appeased; then they will know that I, the Lord, have spoken in My zeal when I have spent My wrath upon them. ¹⁴ Moreover, I will make you a desolation and a reproach among the nations which surround you, in the sight of all who pass by.

Ezekiel 5:12–14 explains the divided hair of verses 1–4 and shows how Jerusalem’s judgment would become a public testimony to the nations. A third would die within Jerusalem through plague and famine; a third would fall by the sword around the city; and a third would be scattered, with a sword pursuing them.

God says His anger will be spent and His wrath satisfied by fulfilling the judgments of the law. His “zeal” expresses His jealous commitment to fulfill the judgments. The people had treated His warnings as empty words. Through their fulfillment, they would know that He had spoken. That recognition is central to Ezekiel. Judgment dismantles the religious assumptions people construct about Him.

The statement that His wrath will be accomplished also leaves room for what follows later in the book. Judgment has an end; restoration comes in a new form through the heavenly Jerusalem and the new temple that Paul describes in Ephesians 2:19-22. Many Christians today think that the glory of God will relocate back to “the bloody city” (Ezekiel 22:2; 24:6, 9; Nahum 3:1), their expectations will fail just as the priests of Judah failed to see their expectations fulfilled.

Jerusalem’s central position becomes a place of public disgrace. God would make the city a desolation and a reproach among the surrounding nations, visible to everyone passing by. This reverses the calling described in verse 5. Jerusalem should have displayed the wisdom and righteousness of God’s government; instead, its ruins would display the consequences of covenant unfaithfulness.

The warning is searching: neither a sacred city nor a sacred building can substitute for obedience to the God whose name it bears. Yet Ezekiel’s larger promise is that God will eventually sanctify His name by gathering, cleansing, and renewing His people (Ezekiel 36:23–28). Under the New Covenant and its Mediator, the house of God will truly be a house of prayer for all the peoples. Isaiah 56:7, 8, speaking of foreigners and eunuchs coming to worship, confirms this:

⁷ … For My house will be called a house of prayer for all the peoples. ⁸ The Lord God, who gathers the dispersed of Israel, declares, “Yet others I will gather to them, to those already gathered.”

This is especially significant in relation to Jesus cleansing the temple. In Mark 11:17, Jesus quotes Isaiah 56:7, including the words “for all the nations.” Isaiah 56:8 presents a gathering expansive enough to include both Israel’s dispersed and others whom God brings near. Together, these are gathered, not at Mount Sinai (Hebrews 12:18) but at the mount where Christ was transfigured, called Mount Sion, which is Mount Hermon (Deuteronomy 4:48). This is the mount, looming over Caesarea Philippi (Matthew 16:13), that Jesus ascended with three of His disciples (Matthew 17:1).

There He was declared to be “My beloved Son” (Matthew 17:5), and so Sion is the new “mount” where all of the sons of God will gather around Him—not literally, of course, but by faith.