Property for the Lord,
for the Priests, and for the Prince
45 When you cast lots to divide the land as an inheritance, you are to devote a contribution to the Lord, a holy area of the land. Its length is to be twenty-five thousand cubits and its width twenty thousand cubits.[a] Its entire area will be holy.
2 Within this area, a square five hundred by five hundred cubits[b] is to be set aside for the sanctuary. There is also to be an open area of fifty cubits all around it.
3 From this measured area, you are to measure off a separate area which has a length of twenty-five thousand cubits and a width of ten thousand cubits. The sanctuary, the most holy place, will be in it. 4 It is to be a holy area of the land.[c] It will be for the priests, the ministers of the sanctuary, who draw near to serve the Lord. It will be a place for their houses, as well as a holy place for the sanctuary.
5 Also an area twenty-five thousand cubits long and ten thousand cubits wide will be set aside for the Levites, the servants of the temple, as their possession, to provide them with cities to live in.[d][e]
6 As the city’s property, you are to assign an area five thousand cubits wide and twenty-five thousand cubits long[f] along one side of the holy contribution.[g] It will belong to the whole house of Israel.
7 For the prince, an area is to be set aside on both sides of the holy contribution and of the area for the city. It will run alongside the holy contribution and alongside the city’s property. On the west side of the city, it will extend west along the tribal boundaries to the western boundary of the land, and on the east side, it will extend eastward in the same way. 8 This land is to be the prince’s property in Israel, so that my princes will no longer oppress my people but will allot the land to the house of Israel according to their tribes.
9 This is what the Lord God says. You have done enough, you princes of Israel! Remove violence and mayhem, and practice justice and righteousness. Remove the burden from my people that you caused by evicting them from their land, declares the Lord God.
10 You must have honest scales, an honest ephah, and an honest bath.[h] 11 The ephah and the bath are to follow one uniform standard. The bath will hold one tenth of a homer, and the ephah will hold one tenth of a homer. The standard is to be based on the homer. 12 The shekel is to be twenty gerahs. Twenty shekels, twenty-five shekels, and fifteen shekels will be the weight of your mina.[i]
Offerings and Festivals
13 This is the special contribution you should dedicate: Take one sixth of an ephah from each homer of wheat, and take one sixth of an ephah from each homer of barley.[j] 14 The prescribed portion of oil (the bath is the standard measure for the oil) is one tenth of a bath from each kor.[k] Ten baths make a kor, and ten baths are a homer.
15 Furthermore, one sheep shall be given from every flock, that is, from every two hundred sheep that comprise a flock from the well-watered land of Israel. These are for the grain offerings, the burnt offerings, and the fellowship offerings, to make atonement for them, declares the Lord God. 16 All the people of the land are to contribute to this offering for the prince in Israel.
17 The prince then is responsible for the burnt offerings, the grain offerings, and the drink offerings on the festivals, on the New Moons, and on the Sabbaths, that is, on all the appointed festivals for the house of Israel. He himself will provide the sin offering, the grain offering, the burnt offering, and the fellowship offering, to make atonement on behalf of the house of Israel.
18 This is what the Lord God says. In the first month, on the first day of the month, you are to take a young bull without blemish and purify the sanctuary. 19 The priest is to take some of the blood of the sin offering and put it on the doorpost of the temple, on the four corners of the ledge of the altar, and on the post of the gate of the inner courtyard. 20 You are to do so also on the seventh day of the month, for the sake of anyone who sins inadvertently or in ignorance, and so you shall make atonement for the temple.
21 In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month, you shall hold the Passover. During the festival, consisting of a week of seven days, unleavened bread must be eaten. 22 On that day the prince is to provide, on behalf of himself and all the people of the land, a bull for a sin offering. 23 On the seven days of the festival he is to provide a burnt offering for the Lord: seven bulls and seven rams without blemish for each day of the seven days, as well as a male goat for a sin offering for each day. 24 As a grain offering he is to provide an ephah for each bull and an ephah for each ram, and a hin of oil for each ephah.
25 In the seventh month, at the festival starting on the fifteenth day of the month, he is to provide for seven days according to these same instructions, in regard to the sin offering, the burnt offering, the grain offering, and the oil.
Footnotes
- Ezekiel 45:1 This area is somewhat more than eight miles by six miles. A Hebrew variant says that the district is 10,000 cubits wide. The Greek text says that it is 20,000 cubits wide. Which measurement is correct depends on whether the area being measured here is the whole district for both priests and Levites or only the portion for the priests. The context seems to refer to the whole district for the clergy, which was 20,000 cubits wide.
- Ezekiel 45:2 About 875 feet by 875 feet—smaller than today’s Temple Mount
- Ezekiel 45:4 This area is a band extending across the top 40% of the special area for the Lord.
- Ezekiel 45:5 The translation follows the Greek text. The Hebrew reads they will have as their possession twenty rooms.
- Ezekiel 45:5 This area covers the 40% of the special area that lies south of the area for the priests and the temple.
- Ezekiel 45:6 About 1.6 miles by 8.3 miles
- Ezekiel 45:6 Along the south side
- Ezekiel 45:10 An ephah is a measure of volume used for solids. A bath is a measure of volume for liquids. In this section, since ancient measurements are compared to other ancient measurements, the ancient measurements are retained rather than converting to modern measurements, which is the EHV’s usual practice. The value of many of these measurements is uncertain. An ephah is equal to about 20 quarts or 2⁄3 of a bushel. A bath is about 6 gallons. A homer is 10 ephahs or 10 baths, that is, 6 bushels or 60 gallons. A hin is about 1⁄6 of a bath, that is, 1 gallon. A shekel is about 4⁄10 ounce. A mina is about 1½ pounds or 24 ounces.
- Ezekiel 45:12 It is not apparent why such an unusual method is used to obtain the weight 60 shekels.
- Ezekiel 45:13 About 1.6%
- Ezekiel 45:14 About 1%