(6) I heard him speaking.--Although the pronoun is not expressed in the original, there can be no question that God Himself spoke directly to the prophet, as in Ezekiel 44:2; Ezekiel 44:5; Ezekiel 44:9, &c. "The man" is without the article in the Hebrew, which leaves it uncertain whether the same being is meant who had hitherto guided the prophet; but as measurements were also made by this guide (Ezekiel 47:3-5), he was probably the same.
Verse 6. - And I heard him (better, one) speaking unto me out of the house; and the (literally, a) man stood by me. Two questions arise - Who was the speaker? and, Who the man? As to the speaker, the natural reply is that the One who addressed Ezekiel from the interior of the "house" was Jehovah himself, whose "glory" had just entered in to take possession of the house, and this view is adopted by most interpreters, though Hengstenberg and Schroder regard the man who stood beside the prophet as the one who addressed him. As to the man, it cannot, as Kliefoth maintains, be decided solely by the absence of the article before "man" that this was a different person from the guide who had hitherto conducted the prophet and measured the Building. The article may have Been emitted because the important point to be recorded was not the circumstance that the "one" who stood beside him was his quondam guide, but the fact that this "one" was a man. That he was also Ezekiel's old conductor is at least a natural suggestion when one finds him afterwards appearing as a measurer with a line in his hand (Ezekiel 47:3).
43:1-27 After Ezekiel had surveyed the temple of God, he had a vision of the glory of God. When Christ crucified, and the things freely given to us of God, through Him, are shown to us by the Holy Ghost, they make us ashamed for our sins. This frame of mind prepares us for fuller discoveries of the mysteries of redeeming love; and the whole of the Scriptures should be opened and applied, that men may see their sins, and repent of them. We are not now to offer any atoning sacrifices, for by one offering Christ has perfected for ever those that are sanctified, Heb 10:14; but the sprinkling of his blood is needful in all our approaches to God the Father. Our best services can be accepted only as sprinkled with the blood which cleanses from all sin.
And I heard him speaking unto me out of the house,.... The holy place, the prophet being in the inward court: this is Jehovah the Father, the God of Israel, whose glory entered into it; who utters his voice out of Zion; who speaks in his church by his word, and the ministers of it; and which is to be heard and regarded, not as the word of man, but as the word of God:
and the man stood by me: whom he saw at first with a measuring line in his hand, Ezekiel 40:3, and with whom he had been all along, and had seen him measure the house, and all belonging to it: he stood by him as the Mediator between God and him; as the medium of communion with him; as the advocate with the Father: he stood by him to interpret what was said to him; to guide him further into the knowledge of divine things; to assist him, protect and defend him, to continue him in fellowship with God, and to preserve him in grace to glory. Here is an appearance of the three Persons in the Godhead; the Father speaking to the prophet out of the house; the Son in human form standing by him; and the Spirit of the Lord, who had took him up from the ground, and had brought him into the inner court.
and the man stood by me: whom he saw at first with a measuring line in his hand, Ezekiel 40:3, and with whom he had been all along, and had seen him measure the house, and all belonging to it: he stood by him as the Mediator between God and him; as the medium of communion with him; as the advocate with the Father: he stood by him to interpret what was said to him; to guide him further into the knowledge of divine things; to assist him, protect and defend him, to continue him in fellowship with God, and to preserve him in grace to glory. Here is an appearance of the three Persons in the Godhead; the Father speaking to the prophet out of the house; the Son in human form standing by him; and the Spirit of the Lord, who had took him up from the ground, and had brought him into the inner court.