Ezekiel 44:28 - Exposition

The Authorized Version conveys the impression that the first portion of the priests' sustenance should be derived from the sin offering, which is not mentioned till the following verse. And it shall be unto them for an inheritance ought rather to be rendered, and there shall be to them (what shall be) for an inheritance ; or more simply, and they shall have an inheritance (Revised Version), which, it is next declared, as in the Law ( Numbers 18:20 ; Deuteronomy 10:9 ; Deuteronomy 18:1 , Deuteronomy 18:2 ), should be Jehovah, and not any territorial possession or tribal tract such as should be assigned to the other tribes (see Ezekiel 48:1-35 .). Smend thinks Ezekiel was scarcely accurate in describing the priests as landless in the sense intended by the Deuteronomist and the priest-code, since in Ezekiel 45:4 they are, after all, furnished with a plot of ground on which to build their houses and erect their sanctuary; whilst Wellhansen holds the priest-code to have somewhat romanced in adopting the same language about the Aaronides and Levites, since, if they really did obtain forty-eight cities, "what were these if not a lot and a land tract, and that too a comparatively great and important one?" Neither view stands in need of refutation.