45:1-25 In the period here foretold, the worship and the ministers of God will be provided for; the princes will rule with justice, as holding their power under Christ; the people will live in peace, ease, and godliness. These things seem to be represented in language taken from the customs of the times in which the prophet wrote. Christ is our Passover that is sacrificed for us: we celebrate the memorial of that sacrifice, and feast upon it, triumphing in our deliverance out of the Egyptian slavery of sin, and our preservation from the destroying sword of Divine justice, in the Lord's supper, which is our passover feast; as the whole Christian life is, and must be, the feast of the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

Verse 5. - A portion of similar dimensions should likewise be marked off for the Levites, for themselves, for a possession of twenty chambers; better, for a possession unto themselves for twenty chambers (Revised Version). Ewald, Hitzig, and Smend, as usual, follow the LXX.  αὐτοῖς εἰς κατάσχεσινπόλεις τοῦ κατοικεῖν), and amend the text after Numbers 35:2; Joshua 21:2, so as to read "cities (עָרִים) to dwell in;" and with them Keil agrees, only substituting "gates" (שְׁעָרִים) instead of "cities." Kliefoth and Curroy retain the word "chambers "as in the text, and think the "chambers" and the "land" were two distinct possessions of the Levites, the chambers having been within (see Ezekiel 40:17, 18) as the land was without the sanctuary. Rosenmüller, Havernick, Hengstenberg, and Schroder decide for "chambers," or "courts," rows of dwellings standing outside the sanctuary as the priests' chambers were located within. Havernick supposes that along with these, which were obviously designed to be employed when the Levites were on duty, there may have been other Levitical towns and dwellings, Hengstenberg conceives them as having been "barracks for the Levites, the inhabitants of which used the twentieth part of the land assigned to them as pasturage." Unfavorable to the first view is the fact that it requires the text to be altered. Against the second is its awkward dividing of the verse and unexpected interjection of a reference to cells within the sanctuary while speaking of the land without. The third, while not free from difficulty as taking לְשָׁכֹת to be equivalent to "cell-buildings," is perhaps the best.

And the five and twenty thousand, of length, and ten thousand of breadth,.... This seems to be another portion of the land, distinct from the former, though of the same measure; see Ezekiel 48:13,

shall also the Levites, the ministers of the house, have for themselves; separate from the priests, to whom they ministered, and were as numerous; or more numerous, than they; this is still designed to set forth the largeness of the church, and the great numbers of its members, who will all be accommodated and supplied with good things:

for a possession for twenty chambers; which some understand of twenty rows of chambers; by which may be meant particular congregated churches, as we have seen all along in this vision, erected for the better use and convenience of the saints in all places and parts of the world, where they are called.

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