Ezekiel 46

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

Worship on the Shabbat and the new moon

¹ Thus says Adonai Yahweh: The gate of the inner court that faces east shall be shut on the six working days, but on the Shabbat day it shall be opened, and on the day of the new moon it shall be opened. ² The prince shall enter by way of the porch of the gate from outside and stand by the doorpost of the gate. The priests shall 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 also worship at the entrance of that gate before Yahweh on the Shabbats and on the new moons.

⁴ The burnt offering that the prince offers to Yahweh on the Shabbat day shall be six lambs without blemish and a ram without blemish; ⁵ and the grain offering shall be an ephah with the ram, and with the lambs a grain offering as much as he is able to give, and a hin of oil with each ephah. ⁶ On the day of the new moon it shall be a young bull without blemish, and six lambs and a ram; they shall be without blemish. ⁷ He shall provide a grain offering, an ephah with the bull and an ephah with the ram, and with the lambs as much as he can afford, and a hin of oil with each ephah. ⁸ When the prince enters, he shall go in by way of the porch of the gate, and he shall go out by the same way.

⁹ But when the people of the land come before Yahweh at the appointed times, whoever enters by way of the north gate to worship shall go out by way of the south gate, and whoever enters by way of the south gate shall go out by way of the north gate. He shall not return by way of the gate through which he came in, but shall go out straight ahead. ¹⁰ And the prince shall be in their midst; when they go in, he shall go in, and when they go out, they shall go out together. ¹¹ At the feasts and at the appointed times the grain offering shall be an ephah with a bull and an ephah with a ram, and with the lambs as much as he is able to give, and a hin of oil with each ephah.

¹² When the prince provides a freewill offering, a burnt offering or peace offerings as a freewill offering to Yahweh, 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 Shabbat day. Then he shall go out, and after he has gone out the gate shall be shut.

The daily offering

¹³ You shall provide a lamb a year old without blemish as a burnt offering to Yahweh daily; morning by morning you shall provide it. ¹⁴ And you shall provide a grain offering with it morning by morning, a sixth of an ephah, and a third of a hin of oil to moisten the fine flour; a grain offering to Yahweh continually, by a perpetual statute. ¹⁵ So they shall provide the lamb, the grain offering and the oil, morning by morning, as a continual burnt offering.

The prince's inheritance

¹⁶ Thus says Adonai Yahweh: If the prince gives a gift to any of his sons, it is his inheritance; it shall belong to his sons; it is their possession by inheritance. ¹⁷ But if he gives a gift from his inheritance to one of his servants, it shall be his until the year of liberty; then it shall return to the prince. Only his sons shall keep his inheritance; it shall be theirs. ¹⁸ The prince shall not take any of the people's inheritance, wronging them by thrusting them out of their possession; he shall give his sons their inheritance from his own possession, so that none of My people shall be scattered from his possession.

The kitchens of the temple

¹⁹ Then he brought me through the entryway that was at the side of the gate, into the holy chambers for the priests, which faced north; and see, there was a place there at the far end toward the west. 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 grain offering, so that they do not bring them out into the outer court and so make the people holy."

²¹ Then he brought me out into the outer court and led me past the four corners of the court; and see, in every corner of the court there was a court. ²² In the four corners of the court there were enclosed courts, forty long and thirty wide; the four in the corners had the same measurement. ²³ There was a row of masonry all around in them, around the four of them, and hearths were made under the rows all around. ²⁴ Then he said to me, "These are the kitchens, where the ministers of the house shall boil the sacrifices of the people."

Notes

• 46:1 The inner gate facing east stays shut on the six working days and is opened on the Shabbat and on the new moon, so that these days stand apart in the life of the sanctuary (compare Isaiah 66:23). The outer east gate stays shut for good, because Yahweh, the Elohim of Israel, entered by it (44:1-2). "The prince" (nasi) is the leader of the people in Ezekiel's vision: he provides the people's offerings (45:16-17), but he is not a priest; the priests offer his sacrifices while he worships at the threshold (verse 2).
• 46:4 These offerings differ from those of the Torah: for the Shabbat, Numbers 28:9 gives two lambs, while here there are six lambs and a ram; for the new moon, Numbers 28:11 gives two young bulls, one ram and seven lambs, while here there are one bull, six lambs and a ram (verse 6). Later Jewish tradition (the Talmud, Shabbat 13b) remembers that the sages nearly withdrew the book of Ezekiel from use over such differences, until Hananiah son of Hezekiah worked out how to reconcile them. Many readers take chapters 40-48 as a vision of a renewed order with its own details rather than a change to the Torah, and how it is to be fulfilled is understood in different ways.
• 46:9 Whoever comes in by the north gate goes out by the south, and whoever comes in by the south goes out by the north: no one turns back the way he came. Besides keeping the crowds at the appointed times moving in order, many have seen in it a picture of worship that sends a person onward, not back. The prince goes in and out in the midst of the people (verse 10), with them rather than above them.
• 46:13 The Torah commands two lambs each day: "The one lamb you shall offer in the morning, and the other lamb you shall offer between the evenings" (Numbers 28:4). Here only the morning lamb is named, with a sixth of an ephah of flour and a third of a hin of oil (verse 14), where Numbers 28:5 has a tenth of an ephah and a fourth of a hin. Like the Shabbat and new moon offerings (see the note at verse 4), these differences have been explained in various ways.
• 46:18 The prince may give land from his own inheritance, but a gift to a servant returns to him in "the year of liberty," the Jubilee, when each one returns to his possession (Leviticus 25:10). He may not take the people's land: Samuel had warned that a king "will take the best of your fields" (1 Samuel 8:14), and Ahab took Naboth's vineyard, the inheritance of his fathers (1 Kings 21). "Wronging them" is lehonotam, from the verb of Leviticus 25:14, "you shall not wrong one another."
• 46:20 The holy offerings are cooked in the inner area so that they are not carried into the outer court, "and so make the people holy": holiness was understood to pass by contact, as the Torah says of the sin offering, "Whatever touches its flesh shall become holy" (Leviticus 6:27). The priests likewise take off their holy garments before going out to the people (44:19).

Ezekiel 45 · Ezekiel 47

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