Page 231 - NOTES ON EZEKIEL

CHAPTER XLI. 225

CHAPTER XLI.
I t has, I confess, struck me much that our prophet
speaks nothing of gold or silver in his prediction of the
future temple. It is notorious how prominent is the
use of each in the tabernacle of old, and how character­
istic of Solomon’s building was the use at least of gold.
Why is this ? A few suggestions on the divine idea of
each may be helpful; yet we must take care, not only
that it be truth that we own, but how we use it.
Gold then seems to be regularly used in scripture as
symbolic of divine righteousness; and this in the
aspect, not of earthly judgment, which vindicates Him
(this is rather set forth by brass), but of what we
draw near to on high. Hence we see the difference be­
tween the altar of burnt-offering and that of incense,
while the fullest illustration of the gold appears in the
ark with its mercy-seat of solid gold. Silver we see in
certain parts of the tabernacle, as in the sockets for the
boards and the pillars, with their hooks and fillets also.
It typifies grace, being the ransom-monev of Israel.
Hence we see the propriety of silver as well as of gold
in that which figures the tabernacle for the people
passing through the wilderness, of gold (and not silver)
characterizing the heavenly city in Revelation xxi.,
while neither is named by the prophet in his description
of the millennial sanctuary we have now before us. It
is not that one can doubt that gold is implied here also,
but this only makes the absence of all express account
of it more striking.
On the chapter little need be said for my present pur-