Ezekiel 47:13 - Meaning and Application

We now move from the affairs of the sanctuary to the affairs of the land, from the city to the countryside. The land of Canaan is secured to them as an inheritance (Ezekiel 47:14). God says, “I raised my hand to give it to your fathers,” meaning he promised it under oath to them and their descendants. Even though they had been out of possession for a long time, God had not forgotten the oath he swore to their fathers.

God’s ways may seem for a time to go against his promises, but his promise will surely stand in the end. He will always remember his covenant, his binding promise. “I raised my hand to give it,” and so it will certainly come to them as an inheritance. In the same way, the heavenly Canaan, the better country, is sure to all God’s true children, because it is what God, who cannot lie, has promised.

The land is also marked off with fixed borders. They must not cross them to take what belongs to their neighbors, and their neighbors must not break in to take from them. A similar map of Canaan was given when Joshua was to lead the people into the land (Numbers 34:1, etc.). That earlier boundary begins with the Salt Sea in the south, goes all the way around, and ends there. This one begins with Hamath near Damascus in the north, and then goes around and ends there (Ezekiel 47:20).

This reminds us that God appoints the place where each of us lives. And God’s people always have reason to say that their lot has fallen in pleasant places. The lake of Sodom is here called the East Sea, because it has been healed by the waters flowing from the sanctuary. It is no longer to be called a salt sea, as it was in Numbers.

The land is also ordered to be divided among the tribes of Israel, with Joseph counted as two tribes so that the number comes to twelve, since Levi was set apart to serve at the sanctuary and had his own portion near it (Ezekiel 47:13, Ezekiel 47:21). “You shall inherit it, one as well as another” (Ezekiel 47:14). Each tribe is to have an equal share, one as much as another.

When the exiles returned from Babylon, this equality did not seem to fit their numbers, because some tribes were far larger than others. Most of the people were from Judah and Benjamin, and very few were from the other ten tribes. But as the twelve tribes stand here in type and vision for the gospel church, the people of God, the picture is very fitting. In another vision, the same number from each tribe is sealed for the living God, 12,000 from each tribe (Revelation 7:5, etc.). To those sealed ones, these portions belonged.

This also shows that all who belong to Christ’s kingdom have received faith of the same kind and value. Male and female, Jew and Gentile, slave and free, are all equally welcome to Christ and all share in him.

The strangers who live among them, who raise children and build households, and so help fill the land, are also to have an inheritance among the tribes, as if they were native Israelites (Ezekiel 47:22, Ezekiel 47:23). That was not allowed in Joshua’s division of the land. This is a kind of public making of them citizens, and it would teach the Jews who their neighbor really is, not only people of their own nation and religion, but anyone they had the chance to help, since they would also be willing to receive help from them.

It would also invite strangers to settle among them and place themselves under the care of God’s power and goodness. But it certainly points to gospel times, when the dividing wall between Jew and Gentile was taken down, and both are one in Christ, in whom there is no difference (Romans 10:12). This land was a picture of the heavenly Canaan, that better country (Hebrews 11:16), where believing Gentiles will have a blessed portion along with believing Jews (Isaiah 56:3).