Ezekiel 45

1 “‘When the land of Israel is divided [among the twelve tribes], you must present to me, Yahweh, one part of the land to be a sacred district. It will be (8.3 miles/13.3 km.) long and (6.7 miles/10.6 km.) wide. That entire area will be (holy/set apart for me).

And when you are making a distribution of the land, by the decision of the Lord, for your heritage, you are to make an offering to the Lord of a part of the land as holy: it is to be twenty-five thousand long and twenty thousand wide: all the land inside these limits is to be holy.

2 Part of that area, (875 feet/265 meters) on each side, will be for the temple area. An additional strip of ground, (87-1/2 feet/26.5 meters) wide, will be left empty all around the temple area.

Of this, a square five hundred long and five hundred wide is to be for the holy place, with a space of fifty cubits all round it.

3 Inside that sacred district, measure a section (8.3 miles/13.3 km.) long and (3.5 miles/5.3 km.) wide.

And of this measure, let a space be measured, twenty-five thousand long and ten thousand wide: in it there will be the holy place, even the most holy.

4 That section will be the sacred portion of the land for the priests who work in the temple and who come near to me to serve me. It will be a place for their houses as well as being a holy place for the temple.

This holy part of the land is to be for the priests, the servants of the holy place, who come near to the Lord to do his work; it is to be a place for their houses and for grass-land and for cattle.

5 An area (8.3 miles/13.3 km.) long and (3.5 miles/5.3 km.) wide will be for the descendants of Levi who work in the temple. That area will belong to them, and they will be permitted to build cities there to live in.

A space of land twenty-five thousand long and ten thousand wide is to be for the Levites, the servants of the house, a property for themselves, for towns for their living-places.

6 Alongside that sacred area will be a section of land that is (8.3 miles/13.3 km.) long and (1.7 miles/2.65 km.) wide. It will be for a city where anyone in Israel [MTY] will be permitted to live.

And as the property for the town you are to have a part five thousand wide and twenty-five thousand long, by the side of the offering of the holy part of the land: this is to be for all the children of Israel.

7 The king will have two sections of land; one will be on the western side of the sacred district and other will be on the eastern side of the sacred district. The one on the western side will extend west to the Mediterranean Sea. The one on the eastern side will extend east to the eastern end of the country. The eastern and western borders of the king’s land will be next to the areas allotted to the tribes.

And for the ruler there is to be a part on one side and on the other side of the holy offering and of the property of the town, in front of the holy offering and in front of the property of the town on the west of it and on the east: measured in the same line as one of the parts of the land, from its limit on the west to its limit on the east of the land.

8 That land will be the land in Israel that belongs to the king. So, [because the kings will have their own land], they will no longer need to oppress my people and steal [land] from them. They will assign the remaining parts of the land to the people, giving a part to each tribe.

And this will be his heritage in Israel: and my rulers will no longer be cruel masters to my people; but they will give the land as a heritage to the children of Israel by their tribes.

9 This is what I, Yahweh the Lord, say: You kings of Israel must stop acting violently and oppressing the people! You must do what is fair and right [DOU]. Stop taking land from the people!

This is what the Lord has said: Let this be enough for you, O rulers of Israel: let there be an end of violent behaviour and wasting; do what is right, judging uprightly; let there be no more driving out of my people, says the Lord.

10 And you must use accurate scales, and accurate containers for measuring things.

Have true scales and a true ephah and a true bath.

11 The baskets for measuring dry things and containers for measuring liquids must be the same size; each must hold 175 quarts/liters.

The ephah and the bath are to be of the same measure, so that the bath is equal to a tenth of a homer, and the ephah to a tenth of a homer: the unit of measure is to be a homer.

12 When you weigh things, you must use weights that everyone accepts as being correct [MTY].’”

And the shekel is to be twenty gerahs: five shekels are five, and ten shekels are ten, and your maneh is to be fifty shekels

13 “‘You must present to the king one bushel of wheat or barley for every 60 that you harvest.

This is the offering you are to give: a sixth of an ephah out of a homer of wheat, and a sixth of an ephah out of a homer of barley;

14 And you must give him one quart/liter of olive oil for every 100 quarts/liters that you make.

And the fixed measure of oil is to be a tenth of a bath from the cor, for ten baths make up the cor;

15 Also, I, Yahweh, declare that you must take one sheep from each 200 sheep in your flocks in the pastures of Israel. Those things that you take to the king will be used with the offerings of things made from grain and for the offerings that will be completely burned and the offerings to maintain fellowship with me, offerings in order for me to forgive you for the sins that you have committed.

And one lamb from the flock out of every two hundred, from all the families of Israel, for a meal offering and for a burned offering and for peace-offerings, to take away their sin, says the Lord.

16 All the Israeli people must join in bringing those offerings to the king of Israel.

All the people are to give this offering to the ruler.

17 The king must provide the animals to be completely burned on the altar, grain for the grain offerings, and wine for the wine offerings for the sacred festivals that I have appointed for the people of Israel—including the festivals to celebrate each new moon and the Sabbaths. He must provide [the animals for] the offerings for the people to become acceptable to me, grain for the grain offerings, animals to be completely burned [on the altar], and offerings to maintain fellowship with me, Yahweh, in order that I will forgive the Israeli people for their sins.

And the ruler will be responsible for the burned offering and the meal offering and the drink offering, at the feasts and the new moons and the Sabbaths, at all the fixed feasts of the children of Israel: he will give the sin-offering and meal offering and burned offering and the peace-offerings, to take away the sin of the children of Israel.

18 This is also what I, Yahweh the Lord, declare: On the first day of the first month [of each year] you must take one young bull that has no defects and [sacrifice it to] cause the temple to be acceptable to me.

This is what the Lord has said: In the first month, on the first day of the month, you are to take a young ox without any mark on him, and you are to make the holy place clean.

19 The [Supreme] Priest must take some of the blood of the offering to cause people to become acceptable to me, and smear it on the doorposts of the temple, on the four corners of the upper ledge of the altar, and on the entry posts of the inner courtyard.

And the priest is to take some of the blood of the sin-offering and put it on the uprights at the sides of the doors of the house, and on the four angles of the shelf of the altar, and on the sides of the doorway of the inner square.

20 He must do the same thing on the seventh day of the month for any people who sin without intending to sin or without realizing that what they did is sinful. By doing that you will purify the temple.

And this you are to do on the seventh day of the month for everyone who is in error and for the feeble-minded: you are to make the house free from sin.

21 In the first month of each year, on the 14th day of the month, you must start to celebrate the Passover Festival. The festival will last for seven days. During that time you must not eat bread made with yeast.

In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month, you are to have the Passover, a feast of seven days; unleavened bread is to be your food.

22 On the first day, the king must provide a bull to be an offering for himself and for the all the other people of the country.

And on that day the ruler is to give for himself and for all the people of the land an ox for a sin-offering.

23 And every day during those seven days he must provide seven young bulls and seven rams that have no defects, to be an offering for the people’s sins.

And on the seven days of the feast he is to give a burned offering to the Lord, seven oxen and seven sheep without any mark on them, every day for seven days; and a he-goat every day for a sin-offering.

24 He must also provide a half bushel of grain to be an offering, and also four quarts of olive oil, for each bill and ram.

And he is to give a meal offering, an ephah for every ox and an ephah for every sheep and a hin of oil to every ephah.

25 During the seven days of the festival [of Living in Temporary Shelters], which starts on the fifteenth day of the seventh month of each year, the king must provide the same things for offerings for the people’s sins, for offerings to be completely burned, for grain offerings, and the same amount of olive oil that he provided each day [during the Passover Festival].’”

In the seventh month, on the fifteenth day of the month, at the feast, he is to give the same for seven days; the sin-offering, the burned offering, the meal offering, and the oil as before.