the monarchy, as it had been
tried since the time of Samuel with scarcely any good results. For every
Hezekiah or Josiah, how many kings of the type of Ahaz or Manasseh had
there been! The Jews were nevertheless still so sincerely attached to
the house of David, that the prophet judged it inopportune to exclude
it from his plan for their future government. He resolved to tolerate
a king, but a king of greater piety and with less liberty than the
compiler of the Book of Deuteronomy had pictured to himself, a servant
of the servants of God, whose principal function should be to provide
the means of worship. Indeed, the Lord Himself was the only Sovereign
whom the prophet fully accepted, though his concept of Him differed
greatly from that of his predecessors: from that, for instance, of
Amos--the Lord God who would do nothing without revealing "His secret
unto His servants the prophets;" or of Hosea--who desired "mercy, and
not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings."
The Jahveh of Ezekiel no longer admitted any intercourse with the
interpreters of His will. He held "the son of man" at a distance, and
would consent to communicate with him only by means of angels who were
His messengers. The love of His people was, indeed, acceptable to
Him, but He preferred their reverence and fear, and the smell of the
sacrifice offered according to the law was pleasing to His nostrils. The
first care of the returning exiles, therefore, would be to build Him
a house upon the holy mountain. Ezekiel called to mind the temple
of Solomon, in which the far-off years of his youth were spent, and
mentally rebuilt it on the same plan, but larger and more beautiful;
first the outer court, then the inner court and its chambers, and lastly
the sanctuary, the dimensions of which he calculates with scrupulous
care: "And the breadth of the entrance was ten cubits; and the sides
of the entrance were five cubits on the one side and five cubits on the
other side: and he measured the length thereof, forty cubits; and
the breadth, twenty cubits"--and so forth, with a wealth of technical
details often difficult to be understood. And as a building so well
proportioned should be served by a priesthood worthy of it, the sons
of Zadok only were to bear the sacerdotal office, for they alone had
preserved their faith unshaken; the other Levites were to fill merely
secondary posts, for not only had they shared in the sins of the nation,
but