Ezekiel 45

The TorahRooted Bible (TRB), translated directly from the Hebrew and Greek.

The holy portion of the land

¹ When you divide the land by lot as an inheritance, you shall set apart a portion for Yahweh, a holy portion of the land, twenty-five thousand in length and ten thousand in breadth; it shall be holy throughout all its territory all around. ² Of this, a square of five hundred by five hundred shall be for the sanctuary, all around, with fifty cubits of pastureland around it. ³ And from this measured area you shall measure twenty-five thousand in length and ten thousand in breadth; and in it shall be the sanctuary, a most holy place. ⁴ It shall be a holy portion of the land; it shall be for the priests, the ministers of the sanctuary, who come near to minister to Yahweh; and it shall be a place for their houses and a holy place for the sanctuary. ⁵ And twenty-five thousand in length and ten thousand in breadth shall be for the Levites, the ministers of the house, as a possession for themselves: twenty chambers. ⁶ And as the possession of the city you shall give five thousand in breadth and twenty-five thousand in length, alongside the holy portion; it shall belong to the whole house of Israel.

⁷ And the prince shall have land on both sides of the holy portion and of the possession of the city, alongside the holy portion and alongside the possession of the city, on the west side westward and on the east side eastward, its length corresponding to one of the tribal portions, from the west border to the east border. ⁸ It shall be his land, his possession in Israel; and My princes shall no longer oppress My people, but they shall give the land to the house of Israel according to their tribes.

Just weights and the prince's offerings

⁹ Thus says Adonai Yahweh: Enough, O princes of Israel! Put away violence and plunder, and do justice and righteousness; take away your evictions from My people, declares Adonai Yahweh. ¹⁰ You shall have just balances, a just ephah and a just bath. ¹¹ The ephah and the bath shall be of one measure, the bath containing a tenth of a homer, and the ephah a tenth of a homer; their measure shall be according to the homer. ¹² The shekel shall be twenty gerahs; twenty shekels, twenty-five shekels and fifteen shekels shall be your mina. ¹³ This is the offering that 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 the statute for oil, the bath of oil, a tenth of a bath from each kor (ten baths are a homer, for ten baths are a homer); ¹⁵ and one sheep from each flock of two hundred, from the well-watered pastures of Israel, for grain offering, for burnt offering and for peace offerings, to make atonement for them, declares Adonai Yahweh. ¹⁶ All the people of the land shall give this offering to the prince in Israel. ¹⁷ And it shall be the prince's part to provide the burnt offerings, the grain offering and the drink offering at the feasts, at the new moons and at the Shabbats, at all the appointed times of the house of Israel; he shall provide the sin offering, the grain offering, the burnt offering and the peace offerings, to make atonement for the house of Israel.

The appointed times

¹⁸ Thus says Adonai Yahweh: In the first month, on the first day of the month, you shall take a young bull without blemish and purify the sanctuary. ¹⁹ The priest shall take some of the blood of the sin offering and put it on the doorposts of the house, on the four corners of the ledge of the altar, and on the doorposts of the gate of the inner court. ²⁰ So you shall do on the seventh day of the month for anyone who has sinned unintentionally or through ignorance; so you shall make atonement for the house.

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 On that day the prince shall provide for himself and for all the people of the land a bull as a sin offering. ²³ And during the seven days of the feast he shall provide as a burnt offering to Yahweh seven bulls and seven rams without blemish, on each of the seven days, and a male goat daily as a sin offering. ²⁴ And he shall provide as a grain offering an ephah for each bull and an ephah for each ram, and a hin of oil for each ephah. ²⁵ In the seventh month, on the fifteenth day of the month, at the feast, he shall provide the same for the seven days: the same sin offering, burnt offering, grain offering and oil.

Notes

• 45:1 "Portion" is terumah, the word for a heave offering, something lifted off and set apart for Yahweh (44:30): here a strip of the land itself is set apart, as the fuller plan in 48:8-22 shows. The unit is not stated; most take it as the cubit of verse 2 (making a strip roughly thirteen by five kilometers), others as the measuring reed. The ancient Greek translation reads "twenty thousand" in breadth, counting the Levites' strip (verse 5) with the priests'; the TRB follows the Hebrew.
• 45:5 "Twenty chambers" is the reading of the Hebrew text, perhaps the rooms of the outer court where the Levites served (40:17). The ancient Greek translation reads instead "cities to dwell in," as in the Levites' cities of Numbers 35:2, and many Bibles follow it; the two readings differ by only a few letters in Hebrew.
• 45:10 This repeats the command of Leviticus 19:36, "You shall have just balances, just weights, a just ephah, and a just hin," and Proverbs says, "False scales are an abomination to Yahweh, but a full weight is His delight" (Proverbs 11:1). The ephah was the standard dry measure and the bath the matching liquid measure, each a tenth of a homer (verse 11); a homer, "a donkey's load," is often estimated at roughly 220 liters, though estimates vary (compare the note at Leviticus 27:16). The princes are to begin justice with honest measures in the market.
• 45:18 Ezekiel's calendar of offerings is not the same as the lists in Leviticus 23 and Numbers 28-29: it begins with a purification of the sanctuary at the new year, and the amounts offered at Passover and at the feast of the seventh month are different. Interpreters explain this in various ways. Later Jewish tradition remembers how hard it was to reconcile these chapters with the Torah, telling that Hananiah son of Hezekiah burned three hundred jars of oil working through them so that the book would not be set aside (Talmud, Shabbat 13b).
• 45:21 Pesach (Passover) keeps its Torah date, the fourteenth of the first month (Leviticus 23:5), followed by seven days of unleavened bread (Numbers 28:17). The Hebrew reads literally "a feast of weeks of days"; most understand it, with the ancient translations, as "a feast of seven days," since seven and weeks are very similar words in Hebrew. In Ezekiel's vision of the restored house, Passover is still kept; Paul calls the Messiah "our Passover" (1 Corinthians 5:7).
• 45:25 "The feast" in the seventh month, on the fifteenth day, is Sukkot (Feast of Tabernacles) (Leviticus 23:34), often called simply "the feast," as when Israel gathered to Solomon "at the feast, in the month of Ethanim, which is the seventh month" (1 Kings 8:2). Ezekiel names the two great seven-day feasts of the year, Passover in the first month and Sukkot in the seventh; Zechariah foresees the nations going up to keep Sukkot (Zechariah 14:16).

Ezekiel 44 · Ezekiel 46

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