The Daily Audio Bible

Sacrificial offerings and gifts

¹³ These are your prescribed contributions: one-sixth of an ephah for each homer of wheat, and one-sixth of an ephah for each homer of barley; ¹⁴ a regular amount of oil,^[a] one-tenth of a bath for each kor^[b] (each kor^[c] contains ten baths); ¹⁵ and one sheep from the flock for every two hundred from Israel’s pastureland, for grain offerings, for entirely burned offerings, and for well-being sacrifices to make reconciliation for them. This is what the Lord God says. ¹⁶ All the people will make this contribution on behalf of the prince in Israel. ¹⁷ The prince will be responsible for the entirely burned offerings, grain offerings, and drink offerings for the festivals, new moons, and sabbaths, all the appointed festivals of the house of Israel. He will offer the purification offering, the grain offering, the entirely burned offering, and the well-being sacrifice to make reconciliation on behalf of the house of Israel.

Festivals

¹⁸ The Lord God proclaims: On the first day of the first month,^[d] you will take a flawless young bull from the herd, and you will purify the sanctuary. ¹⁹ The priest will take some of the blood from the purification offering, and he will set it on the doorposts of the temple and on the four corners of the ledge of the altar and on the doorposts of the gate to the inner courtyard. ²⁰ You will do the same on the seventh day of the month for anyone who sins through inadvertence or ignorance. So you will purge the temple. ²¹ Your Passover will be on the fourteenth day of the first month. Unleavened bread will be eaten during the seven days of the festival. ²² On that day, the prince will provide a young bull as the purification offering for himself and for the people of the land. ²³ For the seven days of the festival, he will provide seven flawless bulls and seven flawless rams, one for each day of the festival, as the entirely burned offering for the Lord, and, for the purification offering, one male goat for each day. ²⁴ He will also provide the grain offerings, one ephah^[e] for each bull, and one ephah for each ram, with one hin^[f] of oil for each ephah. ²⁵ For the festival that begins on the fifteenth day of the seventh month,^[g] he will make the same provisions for the purification offerings, entirely burned offerings, grain offerings, and oil, for all seven days of the festival.

Sabbaths and gift offerings

46 The Lord God proclaims: The east-facing gate of the inner courtyard will remain closed for the six days of the workweek. But on the Sabbath and on the day of the new moon it will be opened, ² and the prince will come in from outside by way of the porch of the gate and stand at the gate’s doorposts. The priests will present the prince’s entirely burned offerings and well-being sacrifices, and then he will bow down on the threshold of the gate and go out. The gate won’t be closed until evening ³ so that the people of the land may bow in the presence of the Lord on sabbaths and new moons at the opening of that gate. ⁴ On the Sabbath day, the prince will offer to the Lord an entirely burned offering of six flawless lambs and a flawless ram, ⁵ a grain offering of one ephah for the ram, and a grain offering at his discretion for the lambs, with one hin of oil for each ephah. ⁶ For the day of the new moon, the offering will be a flawless young bull from the herd, six lambs, and a flawless ram, ⁷ and he will provide a grain offering of one ephah each for the bull and the ram, and for the lambs as much as he likes, with one hin of oil for each ephah.

⁸ When the prince enters, he comes in by way of the porch of the gate and goes out in the same direction. ⁹ When the people of the land come into the Lord’s presence for the festivals, those who enter through the north gate to worship should go out through the south, and those who come in through the south gate should go out through the north gate. They shouldn’t turn around and go out the same way they came in. Instead, they should go out the opposite gate. ¹⁰ The prince should accompany them: when they come in, he comes in, and when they go out, he goes out. ¹¹ At the festivals and appointed gatherings, the grain offering is one ephah for each bull, one ephah for each ram, and whatever one is able to give for each lamb, with one hin of oil for each ephah.

¹² Whenever the prince makes a spontaneous gift to the Lord, whether it is an entirely burned offering or a well-being sacrifice, the gate facing east will be opened for him, and he will present his entirely burned offering and well-being sacrifices, just as he does on the Sabbath day. When he leaves, the gate will be closed after he has gone out.

Daily offerings

¹³ As a daily entirely burned offering for the Lord, you will provide a flawless year-old lamb. You will make the offering every morning. ¹⁴ You will provide a grain offering along with it every morning, one-sixth of an ephah along with one-third of a hin of oil to moisten the choice flour. This is a permanent and perpetual regulation for the grain offering to the Lord. ¹⁵ So the lamb, the grain offering, and the oil are provided every morning as a perpetual entirely burned offering.

Royal land grants

¹⁶ The Lord God proclaims: When the prince gives a gift to each of his sons, it becomes their inheritance. It becomes their family property as an inheritance. ¹⁷ And if he gives one of his servants a gift from his inheritance, it will belong to the servant only until the year of release, and then it will revert to the prince. It is his children’s inheritance; it belongs to them. ¹⁸ The prince won’t take the people’s inheritance by evicting them from their family property. He will bequeath only his own property to his sons, lest any of my people be deprived of their rightful property.

Kitchens

¹⁹ Then he brought me through the passage beside the gate next to the priests’ quarters, the holy chambers facing north. There was a place hidden away on the western side. ²⁰ He said to me, “Rather than taking these offerings out into the outer courtyard and transferring holiness to the people, this is the place where the priests will boil the compensation offerings and the purification offerings, and where they will bake the grain offerings.”

²¹ Then he took me to the outer courtyard, and he had me pass through its four corners, and I saw that there were additional courtyards in each of the corners. ²² In all four corners of the courtyard, these courtyards were constructed to handle smoke. All four were the same size, sixty feet long by forty-five feet wide. ²³ All four had stone masonry all the way around, and hearths were built under this masonry all the way around. ²⁴ He said to me, “These are the kitchens where those who minister in the temple cook the people’s sacrifices.”

Response of obedience

¹³ Therefore, once you have your minds ready for action and you are thinking clearly, place your hope completely on the grace that will be brought to you when Jesus Christ is revealed. ¹⁴ Don’t be conformed to your former desires, those that shaped you when you were ignorant. But, as obedient children, ¹⁵ you must be holy in every aspect of your lives, just as the one who called you is holy. ¹⁶ It is written, You will be holy, because I am holy.^{[a] 17} Since you call upon a Father who judges all people according to their actions without favoritism, you should conduct yourselves with reverence during the time of your dwelling in a strange land. ¹⁸ Live in this way, knowing that you were not liberated by perishable things like silver or gold from the empty lifestyle you inherited from your ancestors. ¹⁹ Instead, you were liberated by the precious blood of Christ, like that of a flawless, spotless lamb. ²⁰ Christ was chosen before the creation of the world, but was only revealed at the end of time. This was done for you, ²¹ who through Christ are faithful to the God who raised him from the dead and gave him glory. So now, your faith and hope should rest in God.

²² As you set yourselves apart by your obedience to the truth so that you might have genuine affection for your fellow believers, love each other deeply and earnestly. ²³ Do this because you have been given new birth—not from the type of seed that decays but from seed that doesn’t. This seed is God’s life-giving and enduring word. ²⁴ Thus,

This is the word that was proclaimed to you as good news.

Your identity as believers

2 Therefore, get rid of all ill will and all deceit, pretense, envy, and slander. ² Instead, like a newborn baby, desire the pure milk of the word. Nourished by it, you will grow into salvation, ³ since you have tasted that the Lord is good.

⁴ Now you are coming to him as to a living stone. Even though this stone was rejected by humans, from God’s perspective it is chosen, valuable. ⁵ You yourselves are being built like living stones into a spiritual temple. You are being made into a holy priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices that are acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. ⁶ Thus it is written in scripture, Look! I am laying a cornerstone in Zion, chosen, valuable. The person who believes in him will never be shamed.^{[c] 7} So God honors you who believe. For those who refuse to believe, though, the stone the builders tossed aside has become the capstone. ⁸ This is a stone that makes people stumble and a rock that makes them fall. Because they refuse to believe in the word, they stumble. Indeed, this is the end to which they were appointed. ⁹ But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people who are God’s own possession. You have become this people so that you may speak of the wonderful acts of the one who called you out of darkness into his amazing light. ¹⁰ Once you weren’t a people, but now you are God’s people. Once you hadn’t received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

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