Ezekiel 45

¹ When you divide the country into portions by lot, you are to allocate the sacred portion of the country to Yahweh: twenty-five thousand cubits long and twenty thousand wide. The whole of this land is to be sacred,

² and of this an area five hundred by five hundred cubits square is to be for the sanctuary, with a boundary fifty cubits wide right round.

³ Out of this area you are also to measure a section twenty-five thousand by ten thousand cubits, in which there shall stand the sanctuary, the Holy of Holies.

⁴ This is to be the sacred portion of the country; it shall belong to the priests who officiate in the sanctuary and approach Yahweh to serve him. There they are to have their houses and also a district set apart for the sanctuary.

⁵ An area twenty-five thousand by ten thousand cubits is to be kept for the Levites serving the Temple to own, with towns to live in.

⁶ You are to give the city possession of an area five thousand by twenty-five thousand cubits, near the land belonging to the sanctuary; this is to be for the whole House of Israel.

⁷ The prince is to have a domain either side of the land belonging to the Holy Place and of the land belonging to the city, and adjacent to the land belonging to the Holy Place and the land belonging to the city, stretching westwards from the west and eastwards from the east, its size equal to one of the portions between the west and the east frontiers[*a]

⁸ of the country. This is to be his possession in Israel. Then my princes will no longer oppress my people; they must leave the rest of the country for the House of Israel, for its tribes.

⁹ The Lord Yahweh says this: Let this be enough for you, princes of Israel! Give up your violence and plundering, practise justice and integrity, crush my people no more with taxation – it is the Lord Yahweh who speaks.

¹⁰ Have scales that are fair, a fair ephah, a fair bath.

¹¹ Let the ephah and bath be equal, let the bath hold one tenth of a homer and the ephah one tenth of a homer. Let the measures be based on the homer.

¹² The shekel is to be twenty gerahs. Twenty shekels, twenty-five shekels and fifteen shekels are to make one mina.

¹³ ‘This is the offering that you are to levy: the sixth of an ephah for every homer of wheat, and the sixth of an ephah for every homer of barley.

¹⁴ The dues on oil: one bath of oil out of every ten baths or out of every cor (which is equal to ten baths or one homer, since ten baths equal one homer).

¹⁵ You are to levy one sheep on every flock of two hundred from the patrimony of Israel for the oblation, the holocaust and the communion sacrifice. This is to form your atonement – it is the Lord Yahweh who speaks.

¹⁶ Let all the people of the country be subject to this due for the prince of Israel.

¹⁷ The prince is to make himself responsible for providing the holocausts, oblation and libation for feasts, New Moons and sabbaths, for all the solemn festivals of the House of Israel. He is to provide the sacrifice for sin, oblation, holocaust and communion sacrifices atoning for the House of Israel.

¹⁸ The Lord Yahweh says this: On the first day of the first month, you must take a young bull without blemish, to purify the sanctuary.

¹⁹ The priest is to take blood from the sacrifice for sin and put it on the doorposts of the Temple, on the four corners of the altar plinth and on the doorposts of the gates of the inner court.

²⁰ You must do the same on the seventh of the month, on behalf of anyone who has sinned through inadvertence or ignorance. This is how you are to make atonement for the Temple.

²¹ On the fourteenth day of the first month, you must celebrate the feast of the Passover. For seven days everyone is to eat unleavened loaves.

²² On that day, the prince must offer a bull as a sacrifice for sin, for himself and all the people in the country.

²³ For the seven days of the feast, he must offer Yahweh a holocaust of seven bulls and seven rams without blemish, daily for a week, and one he-goat daily as a sacrifice for sin,

²⁴ offering one ephah for each bull and one ephah for each ram, and a hin of oil for every ephah for the oblation.

²⁵ For the feast that falls on the fifteenth day of the seventh month, he must do the same for seven days, offering the sacrifice for sin, the holocaust, oblation and the oil.