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Ezekiel 44-46
New American Bible (Revised Edition)

Chapter 44

The Closed Gate. 1 Then he brought me back to the outer gate of the sanctuary facing east, but it was closed. 2 The Lord said to me: This gate must remain closed; it must not be opened, and no one should come through it. Because the Lord, the God of Israel, came through it, it must remain closed. 3 Only the prince may sit in it to eat a meal in the presence of the Lord; he must enter through the vestibule of the gate and leave the same way.[a](A)

The New Law

Admission to the Temple. 4 Then he brought me by way of the north gate to the facade of the temple. I looked—and the glory of the Lord filled the Lord’s house! I fell on my face.(B) 5 The Lord said to me: Son of man, pay close attention, look carefully, and listen intently to everything I tell you about all the statutes and laws of the Lord’s house. Pay close attention to the entrance into the temple and all the exits of the sanctuary. 6 Say to that rebellious house, the house of Israel: Thus says the Lord God: Enough of all your abominations, house of Israel! 7 You have admitted foreigners, uncircumcised in heart and flesh, into my sanctuary to profane it when you offered me food, the fat and blood.[b] Thus you have broken my covenant by all your abominations.(C) 8 Instead of caring for the service of my sanctuary, you appointed these foreigners to care for the service of my sanctuary. 9 Thus says the Lord God: No foreigners, uncircumcised in heart and flesh, shall ever enter my sanctuary: not even any of the foreigners who live among the Israelites.(D)

Levites. 10 As for the Levites who went far away from me when Israel strayed from me after their idols, they will bear the consequences of their sin. 11 They will serve in my sanctuary only as gatekeepers and temple servants; they will slaughter burnt offerings and sacrifices for the people. They will stand before the people to serve them.(E) 12 Because they used to serve them before their idols, thus becoming a stumbling block to the house of Israel, therefore I have sworn an oath against them, says the Lord God, and they will bear the consequences of their sin. 13 They shall no longer come near to serve as my priests, nor shall they touch any of my sacred things or my most sacred offerings, for they must bear their shame, the abominations they committed. 14 Instead I will make them responsible for the service of the temple and all its work, for everything that must be done in it.(F)

Priests. 15 As for the levitical priests, sons of Zadok, who took charge of my sanctuary when the Israelites strayed from me, they may approach me to serve me and stand before me to offer the fat and the blood—oracle of the Lord God.(G) 16 They may enter my sanctuary; they may approach my table to serve me and carry out my service.(H) 17 Whenever they enter the gates of the inner court, they shall wear linen garments; they shall not put on anything woolen when they serve at the gates of the inner court or within the temple. 18 (I)They shall have linen turbans on their heads and linen undergarments on their loins; they shall not gird themselves with anything that causes sweat. 19 (J)And when they go out to the people in the outer court, they shall take off the garments in which they served and leave them in the rooms of the sanctuary, and put on other garments so they do not transmit holiness to the people[c] by their garments.

20 (K)They shall not shave their heads nor let their hair hang loose, but they shall keep their hair carefully trimmed. 21 No priest shall drink wine before he enters the inner court. 22 (L)They shall not take as wives either widows or divorced women, but only unmarried women from the line of Israel; however, they may take as wives widows who are widows of priests. 23 (M)They shall teach my people to distinguish between sacred and profane and make known to them the difference between clean and unclean. 24 (N)In legal cases they shall stand as judges, judging according to my ordinances. They shall observe all my laws and statutes regarding all my appointed feasts, and they shall keep my sabbaths holy.

25 (O)They shall not make themselves unclean by going near a dead body; only for their father, mother, son, daughter, brother, or unmarried sister may they make themselves unclean. 26 After he is again clean, he must wait an additional seven days; 27 on the day he enters the inner court to serve in the sanctuary, he shall present a purification offering for himself—oracle of the Lord God. 28 (P)I will be their heritage: I am their heritage! You shall not give them any property in Israel, for I am their property! 29 (Q)They shall eat grain offerings, purification offerings, and reparation offerings; anything under the ban[d] in Israel belongs to them; 30 (R)all the choicest first fruits of every kind and all the best of your offerings of every kind shall belong to the priests; the best of your dough you shall also give to the priests to bring a blessing upon your house. 31 (S)The priests shall not eat anything, whether bird or animal, that died naturally or was killed by wild beasts.

Chapter 45

The Holy Portion. 1 When you apportion the land heritage by heritage, you shall set apart a holy portion for the Lord, holier than the rest of the land—twenty-five thousand cubits long and twenty thousand cubits wide; the entire area shall be holy. 2 Of this land a square plot, five hundred by five hundred cubits, shall be assigned to the sanctuary, with fifty cubits of free space around it. 3 From this tract also measure off a length of twenty-five thousand cubits and a width of ten thousand cubits; on it the sanctuary, the holy of holies, shall stand. 4 This shall be the sacred part of the land belonging to the priests, the ministers of the sanctuary, who draw near to minister to the Lord; it shall be a place for their homes and an area set apart for the sanctuary. 5 There shall also be a strip twenty-five thousand cubits long and ten thousand wide for the Levites, the ministers of the temple, so they have cities to live in. 6 You shall assign a strip five thousand cubits wide and twenty-five thousand long as the property of the city parallel to the sacred tract; this shall belong to the whole house of Israel. 7 A section shall belong to the prince, bordering both sides of the sacred tract and city combined, extending westward on the west side and eastward on the east side, corresponding in length to one of the tribal portions from the west boundary to the east boundary 8 of the land. This shall be his property in Israel so that my princes will no longer oppress my people, but will leave the land to the house of Israel according to its tribes. 9 Thus says the Lord God: Enough, you princes of Israel! Put away violence and oppression, and do what is just and right! Stop evicting my people!—oracle of the Lord God.

Weights and Measures.[e] 10 (T)You shall have honest scales, an honest ephah, and an honest bath. 11 The ephah and the bath shall be the same size: the bath equal to one tenth of a homer, and the ephah equal to one tenth of a homer; their capacity is based on the homer. 12 The shekel shall be twenty gerahs. Twenty shekels plus twenty-five shekels plus fifteen shekels make up a mina[f] for you.

Offerings. 13 This is the offering you must make: one sixth of an ephah from each homer of wheat and one sixth of an ephah from each homer of barley. 14 This is the regulation for oil: for every bath of oil, one tenth of a bath, computed by the kor,[g] made up of ten baths, that is, a homer, for ten baths make a homer. 15 Also, one sheep from the flock for every two hundred from the pasture land of Israel, for the grain offering, the burnt offering, and communion offerings, to make atonement on their behalf—oracle of the Lord God.(U) 16 All the people of the land shall be responsible for these offerings to the prince in Israel. 17 It shall be the duty of the prince to provide burnt offerings, grain offerings, and libations on feast days, new moons, and sabbaths, on all the festivals of the house of Israel. He shall provide the purification offering, grain offering, burnt offering, and communion offerings, to make atonement on behalf of the house of Israel.(V)

The Passover. 18 Thus says the Lord God: On the first day of the first month you shall take an unblemished young bull to purify the sanctuary.(W) 19 The priest shall take some of the blood from the purification offering and smear it on the doorposts of the house, on the four corners of the ledge of the altar, and on the doorposts of the gates of the inner courtyard.(X) 20 You shall repeat this on the seventh day of the month for those who have sinned inadvertently or out of ignorance; thus you shall purge the temple.(Y) 21 On the fourteenth day of the first month you shall observe the feast of Passover; for seven days unleavened bread must be eaten. 22 On that day the prince shall sacrifice, on his own behalf and on behalf of all the people of the land, a bull as a purification offering. 23 On each of the seven days of the feast he shall sacrifice, as a burnt offering to the Lord, seven bulls and seven rams without blemish, and as a purification offering he shall sacrifice one male goat each day.(Z) 24 As a grain offering he shall offer one ephah for each bull and one ephah for each ram and one hin[h] of oil for each ephah.(AA)

The Feast of Booths. 25 In the seventh month, on the fifteenth day of the seventh month, on the feast day and for the next seven days, he shall make the same offerings: the same purification offerings, burnt offerings, grain offerings, and offerings of oil.(AB)

Chapter 46

Sabbaths. 1 Thus says the Lord God: The gate of the inner court facing east shall remain closed throughout the six working days, but on the sabbath and on the day of the new moon it shall be open. 2 [i]Then the prince shall enter from outside by way of the vestibule of the gate and remain standing at the doorpost of the gateway while the priests sacrifice his burnt offerings and communion offerings; then he shall bow down in worship at the opening of the gate and leave. But the gate shall not be closed until evening. 3 The people of the land also shall bow down in worship before the Lord at the opening of this gate on the sabbaths and new moons. 4 The burnt offerings which the prince sacrifices to the Lord on the sabbath shall consist of six unblemished lambs and an unblemished ram, 5 together with a grain offering of one ephah for the ram and whatever he pleases for the lambs, and a hin of oil for each ephah. 6 (AC)On the day of the new moon, he shall provide an unblemished young bull, six lambs, and a ram without blemish, 7 with a grain offering of one ephah for the bull and an ephah for the ram, and for the lambs whatever he can, and for each ephah a hin of oil.(AD)

Ritual Laws. 8 When the prince enters, he shall always enter and depart by the vestibule of the gate. 9 When the people of the land come before the Lord to bow down on the festivals, if they enter by the north gate they shall leave by the south gate, and if they enter by the south gate they shall leave by the north gate. They shall not go back by the gate through which they entered; everyone shall leave by the opposite gate. 10 When they come in, the prince shall be with them; he shall also leave with them. 11 On feasts and festivals, the grain offering shall be an ephah for a bull, an ephah for a ram, but for the lambs whatever they please, and a hin of oil with each ephah. 12 When the prince makes a freewill offering to the Lord, whether a burnt offering or communion offering, the gate facing east shall be opened for him, and he shall bring his burnt offering or peace offering as he does on the sabbath. Then he shall leave, and the gate shall be closed after his departure. 13 (AE)Every day you shall bring as a burnt offering to the Lord an unblemished year-old lamb; you shall offer it every morning, 14 and with it every morning a grain offering of one sixth of an ephah, with a third of a hin of oil to moisten the fine flour. This grain offering for the Lord is a perpetual statute. 15 (AF)The lamb, the grain offering, and the oil you must bring every morning as a perpetual burnt offering.

The Prince and the Land. 16 Thus says the Lord God: If the prince makes a gift of part of his heritage to any of his sons, it belongs to his sons; that property is their heritage. 17 But if he makes a gift of part of his heritage to one of his servants, it belongs to him until the year of release;[j] then it reverts to the prince. Only the heritage given to his sons belongs to him.(AG) 18 The prince shall not seize any part of the heritage of the people by forcing them off their property. From his own property he shall provide heritage for his sons, so that none of my people will be driven off their property.

The Temple Kitchens. 19 Then he brought me through the entrance at the side of the gateway to the chambers reserved for the priests, which faced north. There I saw a place at the far west end, 20 about which he said to me, “This is the place where the priests cook the reparation offerings and the purification offerings and bake the grain offerings, so they do not have to bring them into the outer court and so transmit holiness to the people.”[k](AH) 21 Then he led me into the outer court and had me cross to the four corners of the court, and there, in each corner, was another court! 22 In all four corners of the courtyard there were courts set off, each forty cubits long by thirty cubits wide, all four of them the same size. 23 A stone wall surrounded them on four sides, and ovens were built along the bottom of the walls all the way around. 24 He said to me, “These are the kitchens where the temple ministers cook the sacrifices of the people.”

Footnotes

  1. 44:3 Ezekiel imagines a scene like this: The prince stands at the eastern gate of the inner court while his sacrifice is being offered (46:2); he then goes to the vestibule of the outer court to eat the sacrificial meal. The closed outer gate on the eastern side signifies that the Lord has entered the Temple permanently, not to depart again.
  2. 44:7–14 According to Ezekiel, the Levites’ priestly role is reduced to the performance of menial tasks as punishment for their misdeeds (cf. vv. 10–14). This demotion was enforced during the restoration of Temple worship under Ezra and Nehemiah; this may explain the small number of Levites willing to return to Jerusalem after the exile.
  3. 44:19 Transmit holiness to the people: holiness was considered to have a physical quality that could be communicated from person to person. It is a danger to those who have not prepared themselves to be in God’s presence. The priests remove their ceremonial garments out of concern for the people.
  4. 44:29 Under the ban: dedicated to the Lord.
  5. 45:10–12 Besides the land monopoly fostered by royal greed and collusion with the wealthy (Mi 2:2; Is 3:12–15; 5:8–10), one grave social evil of preexilic Israel was dishonesty in business; cf. Hos 12:8; Am 8:5. Ephah, bath: see note on Is 5:10.
  6. 45:12 Mina: before the exile, a mina was worth fifty shekels; later, in imitation of Babylonian practice, its value increased to sixty shekels. A shekel weighed slightly less than half an ounce. A shekel’s monetary value depended on whether it was gold or silver.
  7. 45:14 Kor: a liquid and a dry measure, equal to a homer.
  8. 45:24 Hin: one sixth of the liquid measure known as a bath.
  9. 46:2–12 The prophet describes the inner eastern gateway opening on the inner court of the priests in front of the Temple itself where the altar of sacrifice stands. The people may watch the priests making offerings on sabbaths and feast days only by looking through the open gate; the prince, however, may stand inside the gate, in the vestibule on the edge of the inner court, to observe the offerings. Only priests could stand in the court itself.
  10. 46:17 The year of release: the jubilee year; cf. Lv 25:23–55.
  11. 46:20 Cf. note on 44:19.
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Ezekiel 43
Ezekiel 47
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New American Bible (Revised Edition) (NABRE)

Scripture texts, prefaces, introductions, footnotes and cross references used in this work are taken from the New American Bible, revised edition © 2010, 1991, 1986, 1970 Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Inc., Washington, DC All Rights Reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.