401 In the twenty-fifth year of our exile, at the beginning of the year on the tenth of the month - it was the fourteenth year after the city fell - God touched me and brought me here. 2 He brought me in divine vision to the land of Israel and set me down on a high mountain. To the south there were buildings that looked like a city. 3 He took me there and I met a man deeply tanned, like bronze. He stood at the entrance holding a linen cord and a measuring stick. 4 The man said to me, "Son of man, look and listen carefully. Pay close attention to everything I'm going to show you. That's why you've been brought here. And then tell Israel everything you see."
Matthew Henry's Commentary on Ezekiel 40:1-4
Chapter Contents
The Vision of the Temple.
Here is a vision, beginning at ch. 40, and continued to the end of the book, ch. 48, which is justly looked upon to be one of the most difficult portions in all the book of God. When we despair to be satisfied as to any difficulty we meet with, let us bless God that our salvation does not depend upon it, but that things necessary are plain enough; and let us wait till God shall reveal even this unto us. This chapter describes two outward courts of the temple. Whether the personage here mentioned was the Son of God, or a created angel, is not clear. But Christ is both our Altar and our Sacrifice, to whom we must look with faith in all approaches to God; and he is Salvation in the midst of the earth, Psalm 74:12, to be looked unto from all quarters.