Several issues confront the
interpreter of this verse: the significance of the twenty-fifth year of exile,
the meaning of בראשׁ השׁנה (“at the beginning of the year”) and בעשׂור לחדשׁ (“on
the tenth day of the month”). What do these time indicators mean?
Twenty-five is neither a common nor symbolic number in the Hebrew
Bible. The best—and perhaps only—suggestion for its significance has been as
half of a jubilee cycle. Jan van Goudoever has shown that the concept of
“mid-time” was operative in Jewish apocalyptic literature (i.e. Daniel) as well
as later rabbinic and Christian tradition, and may be reflected in the
redaction of the Pentateuch. It is plausible that such a concept is present already
here in Ezekiel. Ezekiel finds himself in “mid-time”: halfway between the time
of judgement (for him, 597 B.C.E.) and expected restoration. He would have
construed the exile as a jubilee period: just as the indebted Israelite had to
serve up to fifty years before returning to home and family, so the nation as a
corporate individual must “serve among the nations” (Jer 25:11 lxx) until the
coming of the jubilee. If this indeed is the symbolic significance of Ezekiel’s
chronological marker, it accords well with the interpretation of the return
from exile as a jubilee event also found, for example, in Isa 61:1–4.
The identification of twenty-five years as half a jubilee is
strengthened by the phrase “at the beginning of the year, on the tenth day of
the month.” As Wellhausen already noticed, the only other passage in the Hebrew
Bible which indicates that the year began on the tenth day of the month is Lev
25:9–10, in which the jubilee year (and, we have argued above, the
cultic/agricultural year in general) began in the seventh month (= Tishri) on
the tenth day of the month, the Day of Atonement. Why the year would begin on
the tenth day of the month has been the occasion for some discussion, but there
is reason to think that the first nine or ten days of Tishri were a New Year’s
Festival and considered “liminal time”—neither the old year nor the new. The
New Year began in earnest only at the end of the festival, the Day of
Atonement. Thus, Ezekiel seems to be following the old “ecclesiastical”
calendar represented in the Holiness Code, where the cultic year begins on the
tenth of Tishri.
Therefore, we conclude with Zimmerli, Greenberg, and Levenson that
the significance of the dating of Ezek 40:1 is that Ezekiel sees a vision of
the restored temple and Israelite nation on the Day of Atonement at the mid-way
point of the jubilee cycle. Only the association with the jubilee year text
(Lev 25:8–10) makes meaningful sense of both the figure of “twenty-five years”
and the “beginning of the year” on the “tenth day of the month.”
What is the significance of this date for understanding the rest
of the vision (chs. 40–48)? The deportees, in a sense “half-way” through the
exile, would be feeling the discouragement associated with “midtime,” and in
need of a word of hope from the Lord. Ezekiel provides that in his vision. On
the Day of Atonement—on which the old temple would have been cleansed and the
Lord would have renewed his presence therein—Ezekiel foresees a new, cleansed
temple to which the Lord’s presence returns. Yet the Day of Atonement with its
restoration of cultic integrity is also linked to the jubilee and the
restoration of social justice. Concern for social justice finds expression in
several passages of the vision (e.g. 44:24; 45:8–12; 46:16–18, 47:21–23).
With respect to the jubilee, several scholars have noted that the
numbers used in the dimensions of the visionary temple are consistently
multiples of twenty-five (half a jubilee) and fifty (a jubilee). Thus, the
number twenty-five in 40:1 is not unrelated to the subsequent vision. In a
sense, the restored temple is a “built jubilee”: that is, built on jubilee
dimensions. Zimmerli comments:
Ist die Frage ganz abwegig, ob nicht am Ende der ganze Bau des
künftigen Tempels durch seine Maßzahlen [sic] als “Bau der Freilassung” gemeint
ist—ein seltsamer, in architektonischen Meßzahlen [sic] gefundener Ausdruck der
großen Freilassungshoffnung des Hauses Israel? (Zimmerli, “Gandenjahr,” 329)
In fact, the entire vision of Israel restored in chs. 40–48 can be
described as Israel finally appropriating the wholeness that should have been
actualized on every Day of Atonement of a jubilee year: cultic purity (e.g.
44:1–31), renewed presence of God (43:1–9), restoration to ancestral land
(47:13–48:35), and social equity (45:9–12; 46:18; 47:21–23). Thus, we see a
strong symbolic association here between the exile as a jubilee period and the
restoration as a jubilee. This association will also be made in Isa 61:1–3 and
Dan 9. (John Sietze
Bergsma, The Jubilee From Leviticus to Qumran: A History of Interpretation [Supplements
to Vetus Testamentum 115; Leiden: Brill, 2007], 188-90)