Purifying Temple

William Dumbrell’s The End of the Beginning examines the Old Testament backgrounds to the final visions of Revelation, chapters 21-22. He looks at those chapters through various lenses – new Jerusalem, new temple, new covenant, new Israel, new creation.

Reviewing Ezekiel’s vision of restoration, he points to the obvious, that Ezekiel presents an eschatology focused on a restored temple. Then he makes this not-so-obvious comment: “The purifying and sanctifying influence of the building upon the land is . . . outlined in Ezek 47:1-12. . . . Fertilizing waters flowing from the sanctuary heal the land and restore it to paradise, the ‘garden of God.’ ‘Trees of life’ are planted on either side of the stream which itself increases to immeasurable degree. . . . These tees will be for ‘food . . . , and one may eat of their fruit unlike an earlier time without fear of judgment. The land, cleansed and renewed by divine possession, is then divided. No prior conquest is needed merely purification” (58).

We might think that a polluted land would need cleansing before a temple is set up. Dumbrell indicates that the opposite happens in Ezekiel: a land cleansed by a new temple. If you want a clean land, seems you start not by cleaning the land but by building a temple. That’ll take care of things.