Two buildings near the temple

42 Then the man took me out through the north gate of the inside yard of the temple. We went into the outside yard. We arrived at a building that was in the north wall of the inside yard. ² This building was 50 metres long and 25 metres wide. Its entrance was towards the north. ³ There was a 10 metre space between one side of this building and the temple in the inside yard. The building's other side was opposite the path in the outside yard. It had three levels of rooms in two rows that were opposite each other. ⁴ A path went between the two rows of rooms. It was 50 metres long and 5 metres wide. The entrances to the rooms were on the north side. ⁵ The rooms at the top level were not as wide as the rooms below them. And the rooms at the middle level were not as wide as the rooms at the lowest level. This was because the higher rooms needed more space in front of them. ⁶ They did not have pillars to hold them up as other rooms in the temple yards did. Instead, the walls of the lower rooms held up the rooms above them. So the rooms of each level were smaller than the rooms below them. ⁷ There was a wall that went across the outside yard in front of the lowest rooms. The wall was 25 metres long. ⁸ The row of rooms in the outside yard was also 25 metres long. But the other row of rooms in the inside yard, opposite the temple, was 50 metres long. ⁹ The lowest level of rooms had an entrance from the outside yard at the east end of the building. ¹⁰ This entrance was at the end of the wall in the outside yard.

There was another building like this one on the south side of the temple. It was opposite the other building and it also had two rows of rooms. ¹¹ There was path between the two rows. They looked the same as the rooms on the north side. The size of the rooms and the entrances were the same as those of the other building. ¹² There was an entrance in the wall opposite the doors of the inside row of rooms. There was also an entrance at the east end of the path between the rows of rooms.

¹³ Then the man said to me, ‘These rooms that are on the north and south sides of the temple's inside yard are holy. They are for the priests who serve the Lord in his temple. In these rooms, the priests will eat the most holy sacrifices that they offer to the Lord. They will put the most holy offerings there. It is where they will put the grain offerings, the sin offerings and the guilt offerings. The priests will do that because the rooms are holy.

¹⁴ When the priests go into the holy place of the temple, they must not leave until they change their clothes. Before they go into the outside yard, they must take off the special clothes that they wear to serve the Lord. Those clothes are holy, so they must put on other clothes. Then they can go out to the places where the people meet.’

¹⁵ The man finished measuring everything inside the place where the temple was. Then he took me out through the east gate. He measured all around the outside of the temple yards. ¹⁶ He used his stick to measure the wall on the east side. It was 250 metres. ^17-19 Then he measured the north side and the south side and the west side. Each side measured the same as the east side. ²⁰ So the wall made a square around the place where the temple was. Each side was 250 metres. The wall made the holy place separate from the ordinary places around it.