(7) The place of the soles of my feet.--Comp. 1Chronicles 28:2; Psalm 132:7.

I will dwell . . . for ever.--This should be the peculiar distinction of the Temple seen in the vision. The Tabernacle and Solomon's Temple had both been accepted as the peculiar dwelling-place of God, but both had passed away. So also it would be with the material Temple of the restoration. But in this Temple of the vision God promises that He would dwell for ever.

By the carcases of their kings.--The "shall defile" with which the later clauses of this verse are connected is not an imperative, but a simple future, and is in accordance with the generally ideal character of the vision. The word "carcases" is here a difficult one. Some commentators understand it literally of the burial of some of the kings in the Temple area; but there is no historical proof that any were so buried, the gardens of the royal palace being quite too distant for the language here used, nor is there anywhere any allusion to such defilement. The simplest explanation is that the language is founded upon Leviticus 26:30, and means idols. Manasseh and others had introduced their idols into the very courts of the Temple (2Kings 21:4-7; sec also 2Kings 16:11).

Verses 7-12. - Debate exists as to who the speaker in the seventh verse was, whether Jehovah or the man - some holding with Kliefoth, Ewald, Smend, and Currey, that he was Jehovah; others, with Havernick, Keil, Hengstenberg, and Schroder, that he was "the man;" and still others, with Plumptre, that it cannot be decided which he was. One thing is clear, that if "the man" was the speaker, his words and message were not his own, but Jehovah's. Yet unless the man had been the angel of the Lord - the view of Hengstenberg and Schroder - it will always seem incongruous that he should have addressed Ezekiel without a "Thus saith the Lord." Hence the notion that the speaker was Jehovah is, perhaps, the one freest from difficulty. The message announced or communication made to the prophet related first to Jehovah's purpose in entering the temple (vers. 7-9), and secondly to his object in showing the house to the prophet, viz. that he might show it to the house of Israel (vers. 10-12). Verse 7. - The LXX. and the Vulgate divide the present verse into two parts, and take the first as equivalent to a solemn word of consecration, the former supplying ἑώρακας the latter vidisti, "thou hast seen." The Chaldee Targum inserts, hic est locus, "this is the place," and in so doing is followed by Luther and the Revised Version. Some word, it is obvious, either a "see!" or a "behold!" must be interpolated, in thought at least, unless one adopts the construction of the Authorized Version, with which Smend agrees, and makes "the place of my throne," etc., to be governed By the verb "defile," or, with Ewald, places it under the regimen of "show" in ver. 10, throwing the whole intervening clause into a long parenthesis - a device which does not contribute to lucidity. Of the two expressions here employed to designate the sanctuary - not the temple proper, but the whole house with its surroundings - the former, the place of my throne, though peculiar to Ezekiel, receives explanation from the conception, familiar to earlier writers, of Jehovah as dwelling between the cherubim (Exodus 25:22; 1 Samuel 4:4; 2 Kings 19:15; Psalm 80:1; Isaiah 37:16); the latter, the place of the soles of my feet, was of frequent occurrence to denote the ark of the covenant (1 Chronicles 28:2; Psalm 99:5; Psalm 132:7) and the temple (Isaiah 60:13; Lamentations 2:1). The word of consecration was expressed in the promise, I will dwell (in the temple) in the midst of the children of Israel forever, etc., which went beyond anything that had been spoken concerning either the tabernacle of Moses or the temple of Solomon (comp. Exodus 25:8; Exodus 29:45; 1 Kings 6:13). The second part of the verse announces what would be the result of Jehovah's perpetual inhabitation of the temple - the house of Israel would no more defile his holy Name either by their whoredom or by the carcasses of their kings in their high places, or, according to another reading, in their death. That the whoredom signified idolatry (comp. Ezekiel 16.) commentators are agreed. What divides them is whether this also is alluded to in the alternative clause. Rosenmüller, Havernick, Keil, Fairbairn, and Plumptre believe it is, contending that the "carcasses of their kings" (comp. Leviticus 26:30; and Jeremiah 16:18) was a contemptuous and satirical designation of the idols they had formerly served, that the word "kings ' is frequently employed in this sense in Scripture (see Isaiah 8:21; Amos 5:26; Zephaniah 1:5), and that the special sin complained of, that of building altars for dead idols in the very temple court, had been practiced by more kings than one in Judah (comp. 2 Kings 16:11; 2 Kings 21:4, 5-7); and in support of this view may be urged first that it is favored by the use of the term bamotk, or "high places," in ver. 7, and secondly by the exposition offered in ver. 8 of the nature of the sin. Ewald, Hitzig, Kliefoth, and Smend, on the other hand, regard the sin spoken of in the second clause as different from that indicated in the first, maintaining that while this was the practice of defiling Jehovah's sanctuary by idolatry that was the desecration of the same by the interment in its courts of their dead kings. Against this, however, stands the fact that no authentic instance can be produced of a Judaean sovereign's corpse having been interred in the temple area. David, Solomon, Jehoshaphat, and others were buried in the city of David (1 Kings 2:10; 1 Kings 11:43; 1 Kings 22:50), and a place of sepulchers existed on the south-west comer of Zion in the days of Nehemiah (Nehemiah 3:16); but these prove nothing unless the temple hill be taken, as no doubt it sometimes was, in an extended sense as inclusive of Mount Zion. Similarly, the statement that Manasseh had a burial-place in the garden of Uzzah (2 Kings 21:18, 26) cannot be adduced in support of this view, unless it can be shown that the garden of Uzzah was situated on the temple hill. On the whole, therefore, the balance of argument inclines in favor of the first view, though it does involve the introduction of a figurative sense into the words.

43:1-27 After Ezekiel had surveyed the temple of God, he had a vision of the glory of God. When Christ crucified, and the things freely given to us of God, through Him, are shown to us by the Holy Ghost, they make us ashamed for our sins. This frame of mind prepares us for fuller discoveries of the mysteries of redeeming love; and the whole of the Scriptures should be opened and applied, that men may see their sins, and repent of them. We are not now to offer any atoning sacrifices, for by one offering Christ has perfected for ever those that are sanctified, Heb 10:14; but the sprinkling of his blood is needful in all our approaches to God the Father. Our best services can be accepted only as sprinkled with the blood which cleanses from all sin.And he said unto me, son of man,.... A kind, usual, and singular appellation, given to this prophet: these are the words either of the man that stood by him, so the Arabic version; or of Jehovah, speaking out of the house to him:

the place of my throne, and the place of the soles of my feet: that is, this house, the church of God, is the place where the throne of the Lord is set; where he rules and reigns; where he sets his feet, and is his resting place; even his, whose throne is the heaven, and the earth his footstool; here Christ, as King of saints, dwells, and here he walks and shows the glory of his majesty:

where I will dwell in the midst of the children of Israel for ever; not Carnal, but spiritual Israel; such as are Israelites indeed, or which the church will be full in the latter day, both Jews and Gentiles; and in the midst of these will Jehovah dwell, and grant his gracious presence, and never more depart from them: this shows that this house or building can not be understood of the second temple; since the Lord did not dwell in that for ever, but has left that house desolate hundreds of years ago: some Jewish writers (p) have owned that it belongs to the times of the Messiah:

and my name shall the house of Israel no more defile, or "profane"; or cause to be blasphemed by immoralities, or false doctrines, or superstition and will worship; denoting the holiness of life, purity of doctrine and worship, in the churches of Christ in the latter day; see Isaiah 4:3,

neither they, nor their kings, by their whoredom: that is, idolatry, which is spiritual fornication; such as the kings of Israel, and their subjects, were often guilty of, before their captivity in Babylon, though not after; nor will they ever return to it in the latter day, when converted; for they will never espouse the idolatries of Rome; and those kings and people that bear the name of Christians, and yet commit fornication with the whore of Babylon, shall do so no more after these times, Revelation 17:2,

nor by the carcasses of their kings in their high places; or, and "their high places" (q); that is, by both; by the carcasses of their kings being buried in or near the house of God; so the Targum adds, at their death (r); or by human carcasses being sacrificed to Molech or Milcom, which signifies their king: or else the idols themselves are so called, because lifeless and abominable; see Jeremiah 16:18, and the worship of which the kings of Israel encouraged by precept and practice, order and example, and therefore called theirs; and also by their high places, which they made for idolatrous worship, and which were made where the carcasses of their kings were laid, as Ben Melech observes; and all which were done, especially in the reigns of Manasseh and Ammon: but now nothing of this kind shall be hereafter, or any thing now similar to it, in the antichristian state.

(p) Vid. R. Isaac Chizzuk Emunah, par. 1. p. 51. (q) "et excelsis suis", Junius & Tremellius, Piscator. (r) So Abendana takes this word to signify "in their death"; their carcasses being buried in their gardens, as Manasseh, 2 Kings 21.18.