Ezekiel 44-47

Amplified Bible, Classic Edition

44 Then the man [an angel] brought me back the way of the outer gate of the sanctuary which faces the east, and it was shut.

² Then the Lord said to me, This gate shall be ^[a]shut; it shall not be opened and no man shall enter in by it, for the Lord, the God of Israel, has entered in by it; therefore it shall remain shut.

³ As for the prince, being the prince, he shall sit in it to eat bread before the Lord; he shall enter by way of the porch or vestibule of the gate and shall go out the same way.

⁴ Then he brought me by way of the north gate to the front of the temple; I looked, and behold, the glory of the Lord filled the house of the Lord, and I fell upon my face.^(A)

⁵ And the Lord said to me, Son of man, mark well and set your heart to see with your eyes and hear with your ears all that I say to you concerning all the ordinances of the house of the Lord and all its laws, and mark well and set your heart to know who are allowed to enter the temple and all those who are excluded from the sanctuary.

⁶ And you shall say to the rebellious, even to the house of Israel, Thus says the Lord God: O you house of Israel, let all your previous abominations be enough for you! [Do not repeat them!]

⁷ You have brought into My sanctuary aliens, uncircumcised in heart and uncircumcised in flesh, to be in My sanctuary to pollute and profane it, even My house, when you offer My bread, the fat and the blood; and through it all and in addition to all your abominations, they and you have broken My covenant.

⁸ And you have not kept charge of My holy things, but you have chosen foreign keepers to please yourselves and have set them in charge of My sanctuary.

⁹ Therefore thus says the Lord God: No foreigner uncircumcised in heart and flesh shall enter into My sanctuary [where no one but the priests might enter], of any foreigners who are among the children of Israel.

¹⁰ But the Levites who went far away from Me when Israel went astray, who went astray from Me after their idols, they shall bear [the punishment for] their iniquity and guilt.

¹¹ They shall minister in My sanctuary, having oversight as guards at the gates of the temple and ministering in the temple. They shall slay the burnt offering and the sacrifice for the people, and they shall attend the people to serve them.

¹² Because [the priests] ministered to [the people] before their idols and became a stumbling block of iniquity and guilt to the house of Israel, therefore I have lifted up My hand and have sworn against them, says the Lord God, that they shall bear the punishment for their iniquity and guilt.

¹³ And they shall not come near to Me to do the office of a priest to Me, nor come near to any of My holy things that are most sacred; but they shall bear their shame and their punishment for the abominations which they have committed.

¹⁴ Yet I will appoint them as caretakers to have charge of the temple, for all the service of the temple and for all that will be done in it.

¹⁵ But the Levitical priests, the sons of Zadok, who kept the charge of My sanctuary when the children of Israel went astray from Me, shall come near to Me to minister to Me, and they shall attend Me to offer to Me the fat and the blood, says the Lord God.

¹⁶ They shall enter into My sanctuary; and they shall come near to My table to minister to Me, and they shall keep My charge.

¹⁷ When they enter the gates of the inner court, they shall be clothed in linen garments; no wool shall be on them while they minister at the gates of the inner court and within the temple.

¹⁸ They shall have linen turbans on their heads and linen breeches upon their loins; they shall not gird themselves with anything that causes [them to] sweat.

¹⁹ And when they go out into the outer court to the people, they shall put off the garments in which they ministered and lay them in the holy chambers, and they shall put on other garments, lest by contact of their garments with the people they should consecrate (separate and set apart for holy use) such persons [unintentionally and unfittingly].

²⁰ Neither shall they shave their heads or allow their locks to grow long; they shall only cut short or trim the hair of their heads.

²¹ Neither shall any priest drink wine when he enters the inner court.

²² Neither shall they take for their wives a widow or a woman separated or divorced from her husband; but they shall marry maidens [who are virgins] of the offspring of the house of Israel or a widow previously married to a priest.

²³ The priests shall teach My people the difference between the holy and the common or profane, and cause them to distinguish between the unclean and the clean.

²⁴ And in a controversy they shall act as judges, and they shall judge according to My judgments; and they shall keep My laws and My statutes in all My appointed feasts, and they shall keep My Sabbaths holy.

²⁵ And they shall go near to no dead person to defile themselves, except for father or for mother, for son or for daughter, for brother or for sister who has had no husband; for them they may defile themselves.^(B)

²⁶ And after he is cleansed [from the defilement of a dead body] they shall reckon to him seven days more before returning to the temple.

²⁷ And on the day that he goes into the sanctuary, into the inner court to minister in the sanctuary, he shall offer his sin offering, says the Lord God.

²⁸ This [their ministry to Me] shall be to them as an inheritance, for I am their inheritance; and you shall give them no possession in Israel, for I am their possession.^(C)

²⁹ They shall eat the meal offering and the sin offering and the trespass offering, and every offering in Israel dedicated by a solemn vow to God shall be theirs.

³⁰ And the first of all the firstfruits of all kinds, and every offering of all kinds from all your offerings, shall belong to the priests. You shall also give to the priest the first of your coarse meal and bread dough, that a blessing may rest on your house.

³¹ The priests shall not eat of anything that has died of itself or is torn, whether it be bird or beast.

45 Moreover, when you shall divide the land by apportioned and assigned lots for inheritance, you shall set apart as an offering to the Lord a portion of the land to be used for holy purposes. The length shall be 25,000 ^[b]cubits, and the breadth 20,000. It shall be holy (set apart and consecrated to sacred use) in its every area.^(D)

² Of this there shall belong to the sanctuary a square plot 500 by 500, and 50 cubits for the open space around it.

³ And in this sacred section you shall measure off a portion 25,000 ^[c]cubits in length and 10,000 cubits in breadth. And in it shall be the sanctuary which is most holy.

⁴ It is a holy portion of the land; it shall be for the priests, the ministers of the sanctuary, who come near to minister to the Lord; and it shall be a place for their houses and a holy place (set apart as sacred) for the sanctuary.

⁵ And another portion of land, 25,000 cubits long and 10,000 cubits wide, shall also be for the Levites, the ministers of the temple, and they shall possess it as a place in which to live.

⁶ And you shall appoint for the possession of the city an area of 5,000 cubits wide and 25,000 cubits long, along beside the portion set aside as a holy section. It shall belong to the whole house of Israel.

⁷ And to the prince shall belong the land on the one side and on the other side of the portion set aside as a holy section and the property of the city, in front of the holy section and the property of the city, from the west side westward and from the east side eastward; and the length shall be answerable to that of one of the tribal portions and parallel to it from the western boundary to the eastern boundary of the land.

⁸ It shall be for the prince—his possession in Israel. And My princes shall no more oppress My people, but they shall give the rest of the land to the house of Israel according to their tribes.

⁹ Thus says the Lord God: That is enough for you, O princes of Israel! Stop the violence and plundering and oppression [that you did when you were given no property], and do justice and righteousness, and take away your exactions and cease your evictions of My people, says the Lord God.

¹⁰ You shall have just weights on your scales and just measures—both a just ephah measure and a just bath measure.

¹¹ The ephah and the bath measures shall both be the same size, the bath containing one tenth of a homer and the ephah one tenth of a homer; the standard measure shall be the homer.

¹² And the shekel shall be twenty gerahs; twenty shekels and twenty-five shekels and fifteen shekels shall be your maneh.

¹³ This is the offering which you shall make: a sixth of an ephah from each homer of wheat and a sixth of an ephah from each homer of barley.

¹⁴ And as to the set portion of oil, you shall offer the tenth part of a bath of oil out of each cor, which is a homer of ten baths, for ten baths make [both a cor and] a homer.

¹⁵ And [you shall offer] one lamb out of every flock of two hundred, out of the well-watered pastures of Israel and from all the families of Israel, to provide for a meal offering and for a burnt offering and for peace offerings, to make atonement for those who brought them, says the Lord God.

¹⁶ All the people of the land shall give this offering for the prince in Israel.

¹⁷ And it shall be the prince’s part to furnish [from the contributions of the people] the burnt offerings, meal offerings, and drink offerings at the feasts and on the New Moons and on the Sabbaths, at all the appointed feasts of the house of Israel. He shall prepare and make the sin offering, the meal offering, the burnt offering, and the peace offerings to make atonement for, bringing forgiveness and reconciliation to, the house of Israel.

¹⁸ Thus says the Lord God: In the first [month], on the first [day] of the month, you shall take a young bull without blemish and you shall cleanse the sanctuary.

¹⁹ And the priest shall take some of the blood of the sin offering and put it upon the doorposts of the temple and upon the four corners of the ledge of the altar and upon the posts of the gate of the inner court.

²⁰ You shall do this on the seventh day of the month for everyone who has sinned through error or ignorance and for him who is simple-minded. So shall you make atonement for the temple.

²¹ In the first month on the fourteenth day of the [month]; you shall have the Passover, a feast of seven days; unleavened bread shall be eaten.

²² Upon that day the prince shall prepare for himself and for all the people of the land a bullock for a sin offering.

²³ And for the seven days of the feast he shall prepare a burnt offering to the Lord, seven bullocks and seven rams without blemish daily for the seven days, and a he-goat daily for a sin offering.

²⁴ And he shall prepare as a meal offering to be offered with each bullock an ephah of meal, an ephah for each ram, and a hin of oil for each ephah of meal.

²⁵ In the seventh [month], on the fifteenth day of the month, he shall make the same provision and preparation for the seven days of the feast, for sin offerings, burnt offerings, bloodless or meal offerings, and for the oil.

46 Thus says the Lord God: The gate of the inner court that faces east shall be shut during the six working days, but on the Sabbath it shall be opened, and also on the day of the New Moon it shall be opened.

² And the prince shall enter by the porch or vestibule of the gate from without and shall stand by the sidepost of the gate. The priests shall prepare and offer his burnt offering and his peace offerings, and he shall worship at the threshold of the gate. Then he shall go out, but the gate shall not be shut until evening.

³ The people of the land shall worship at the entrance of that gate before the Lord on the Sabbaths and on the New Moons.

⁴ And the burnt offering that the prince shall offer to the Lord on the Sabbath day shall be six lambs without blemish and a ram without blemish.

⁵ And the bloodless or meal offering with the ram shall be an ephah, and the meal offering with the lambs shall be as much as he is able and willing to give, and a hin of oil with each ephah.

⁶ And on the day of the New Moon the offering shall be a young bull without blemish and six lambs and a ram without blemish.

⁷ And the prince shall provide and make a meal or bloodless offering, an ephah for the bullock and an ephah for the ram, and for the lambs as he is able and willing according to what has been made available to his hand, and a hin of oil to each ephah.

⁸ And when the prince shall enter, he shall go in by the porch or vestibule of that gate and he shall go out by way of it.

⁹ But when the people of the land shall come before the Lord at the appointed solemn feasts, he who enters the north gate to worship shall go out by the south gate, and he who enters by the south gate shall go out by the north gate; he shall not return by the gate by which he came in but shall go out by the opposite gate [straight ahead].^(E)

¹⁰ And the prince, when they go in, shall go in with them, and when they go out, he shall go out.

¹¹ And in the appointed and solemn feasts the meal or bloodless offering shall be with a bullock an ephah, and with a ram an ephah, and with the lambs as much as the prince is willing and able to give [from what has been made available to him], and a hin of oil with each ephah.

¹² When the prince shall prepare and make a freewill burnt offering or peace offerings voluntarily to the Lord, the gate that faces east shall be opened for him, and he shall offer his burnt offering and his peace offerings as he does on the Sabbath day. Then he shall go out, and after he has gone out, the gate shall be shut.

¹³ And a lamb a year old without blemish shall you [the priests, for the congregation] offer daily to the Lord; you shall prepare and offer it every morning.

¹⁴ And you [the priests] shall prepare a meal offering to go with it every morning, one-sixth of an ephah with one-third of a hin of oil to moisten the fine flour. This is a perpetual ordinance for a continual meal offering to the Lord.

¹⁵ Thus shall they prepare and offer the lamb and the meal offering and the oil every morning for a continual burnt offering.

¹⁶ Thus says the Lord God: If the prince gives a gift to any of his sons out of his inheritance, it shall belong to his sons; it is their property by inheritance.

¹⁷ But if he gives a gift out of his inheritance to one of his servants, then it shall be his until the year of liberty [the Year of Jubilee]; after that it shall be returned to the prince; only his sons may keep a gift from his inheritance [permanently].

¹⁸ Moreover, the prince shall not take of the people’s inheritance by oppression, thrusting them out of their property; what he gives to his sons he shall take out of his own possession, so that none of My people shall be separated from his [inherited] possession.

¹⁹ Then he [my guide] led me through the entrance which was at the side of the gate into the holy chambers for the priests, which faced the north; and behold, there was a place at the extreme western end of them.

²⁰ And he said to me, This is the place where the priests shall boil the guilt offering and the sin offering, and where they shall bake the [bloodless] meal offering, to prevent their having to bring them into the outer court, lest they should thereby wrongfully sanctify (separate and consecrate for holy service) the people who are there.

²¹ And he brought me out into the outer court and caused me to pass by the four corners of the court, and behold, in every corner of the court there was a court.

²² In the four corners of the court there were courts joined on and enclosed, forty cubits long and thirty broad; these four in the corners were the same size.

²³ And there was a row of masonry inside them, round about [each of] the four courts, and it was made with hearths for boiling at the bottom of the rows round about.

²⁴ Then said he to me, These are the kitchens of those who do the boiling, where the ministers [the Levites] of the temple shall boil the sacrifices of the people.

47 Then he [my guide] brought me again to the door of the house [of the Lord—the temple], and behold, waters issued out from under the threshold of the temple toward the east, for the front of the temple was toward the east; and the waters came down from under, from the right side of the temple, on the south side of the altar.

² Then he brought me out by way of the north gate and led me around outside to the outer gate by the way that faces east, and behold, waters were running out on the right side.^(F)

³ And when the man went on eastward with the measuring line in his hand, he measured a thousand cubits, and he caused me to pass through the waters, waters that were ankle-deep.

⁴ Again he measured a thousand cubits and caused me to pass through the waters, waters that reached to the knees. Again he measured a thousand cubits and caused me to pass through the waters, waters that reached to the loins.

⁵ Afterward he measured a thousand, and it was a river that I could not pass through, for the waters had risen, waters to swim in, a river that could not be passed over or through.

⁶ And he said to me, Son of man, have you seen this? Then he led me and caused me to return to the bank of the river.

⁷ Now when I had returned, behold, on the bank of the river were very many trees on the one side and on the other.

⁸ Then he said to me, These waters pour out toward the eastern region and go down into the Arabah (the Jordan Valley) and on into the Dead Sea. And when they shall enter into the sea [the sea of putrid waters], the waters shall be healed and made fresh.

⁹ And wherever the double river shall go, every living creature which swarms shall live. And there shall be a very great number of fish, because these waters go there that [the waters of the sea] may be healed and made fresh; and everything shall live wherever the river goes.

¹⁰ The fishermen shall stand on [the banks of the Dead Sea]; from En-gedi even to En-eglaim shall be a place to spread nets; their fish shall be of very many kinds, as the fish of the Great or Mediterranean Sea.

¹¹ But its swamps and marshes will not become wholesome for animal life; they shall [as the river subsides] be left encrusted with salt and given over to it.

¹² And on the banks of the river on both its sides, there shall grow all kinds of trees for food; their leaf shall not fade nor shall their fruit fail [to meet the demand]. Each tree shall bring forth new fruit every month, [these supernatural qualities being] because their waters came from out of the sanctuary. And their fruit shall be for food and their leaves for healing.

¹³ Thus says the Lord God: These shall be the boundaries by which you shall divide the land among the twelve tribes of Israel: Joseph shall have two portions.

¹⁴ And you shall divide it equally. I lifted up My hand and swore to give it to your fathers, and this land shall fall to you as your inheritance.

¹⁵ And this shall be the boundary of the land on the north side: from the Great or Mediterranean Sea by way of Hethlon to the entrance of Zedad,

¹⁶ Hamath, Berothah, Sibraim, which is on the border between Damascus and Hamath, as far as Hazer-hatticon on the border of Hauran.

¹⁷ So the boundary shall extend from the [Mediterranean] Sea to Hazar-enan, at the boundary of Damascus on the north, together with the boundary of Hamath to the north. This is the north side.

¹⁸ And on the east side you shall measure the boundary from between Hauran and Damascus, and Gilead on one side and the land of Israel on the other, with the Jordan forming the boundary down to the East or Dead Sea. And this [from Damascus to the Dead Sea and including it] is the east side.

¹⁹ And the south side [boundary] southward, from Tamar [near the Dead Sea] shall run as far as the waters of Meribath-kadesh, then along the Brook of Egypt to the Great or Mediterranean Sea. And this is the south side.

²⁰ On the west side [the boundary] shall be the Great or Mediterranean Sea to a point opposite the entrance of Hamath [north of Mount Hermon]. This is the west side.

²¹ So you shall divide this land among you according to the tribes of Israel.

²² You shall divide it by allotment as an inheritance for yourselves and for the foreigners who reside among you and shall have children born among you. They shall be to you as those born in the country among the children of Israel; they shall inherit with you among the tribes of Israel.

²³ In whatever tribe the foreigner resides, there shall you give him his inheritance, says the Lord God.