December 09, 2002 Copyright © by United States Conference of Catholic BishopsEzekiel
Chapter 45
- 1
- When you apportion the land into inheritances, you shall set apart a sacred tract of land for the LORD, twenty-five thousand cubits long and twenty thousand wide; its whole area shall be sacred.
- 2
- Of this land a square plot, five hundred by five hundred cubits, surrounded by a free space of fifty cubits, shall be assigned to the sanctuary.
- 3
- Also from this sector measure off a strip, twenty-five thousand cubits long and ten thousand wide, within which shall be the sanctuary, the holy of holies.
- 4
- This shall be the sacred part of the land belonging to the priests, the ministers of the sanctuary, who draw near to minister to the LORD; it shall be a place for their homes and pasture land for their cattle.
- 5
- Also there shall be a strip twenty-five thousand cubits long and ten thousand wide as property for the Levites, the ministers of the temple, that they may have cities to live in.
- 6
- As property of the City you shall designate a strip five thousand cubits wide and twenty-five thousand long, parallel to the sacred tract; this shall belong to the whole house of Israel.
- 7
- The prince shall have a section bordering on both sides of the combined sacred tract and City property, extending westward on the western side and eastward on the eastern side, corresponding in length to one of the tribal portions from the western boundary to the eastern boundary
- 8
- of the land. This shall be his property in Israel, so that the princes of Israel will no longer oppress my people, but will leave the land to the house of Israel according to their tribes.
- 9
- 1 Thus says the Lord GOD: Enough, you princes of Israel! Put away violence and oppression, and do what is right and just! Stop evicting my people! says the Lord GOD.
- 10
- You shall have honest scales, an honest ephah, and an honest liquid measure.
- 11
- The ephah and the liquid measure shall be of the same size: the liquid measure equal to a tenth of a homer, and the ephah equal to a tenth of a homer; by the homer they shall be determined.
- 12
- The shekel shall be twenty gerahs. Twenty shekels, twenty-five shekels, plus fifteen shekels shall be your mina.
- 13
- These are the offerings you shall make: one sixth of an ephah from each homer of wheat, and one sixth of an ephah from each homer of barley.
- 14
- 2 The regulation for oil: for every measure of oil, a tenth of a measure, computed by the kor of ten liquid measures (or a homer, for ten liquid measures make a homer).
- 15
- One sheep from the flock for every two hundred from the pasturage of Israel, for sacrifice--holocausts and peace offerings and atonement sacrifices, says the Lord GOD.
- 16
- All the people of the land shall be bound to this offering (for the prince in Israel).
- 17
- It shall be the duty of the prince to provide the holocausts, cereal offerings, and libations on the feasts, new moons, and sabbaths, on all the festivals of the house of Israel. He shall offer the sin offerings, cereal offerings, holocausts, and peace offerings, to make atonement on behalf of the house of Israel.
- 18
- Thus says the Lord GOD: On the first day of the first month you shall use an unblemished young bull as a sacrifice to purify the sanctuary.
- 19
- Then the priest shall take some of the blood from the sin offering and put it on the doorposts of the temple, on the four corners of the ledge of the altar, and on the doorposts of the gates of the inner court.
- 20
- You shall repeat this on the first day of the seventh month for those who have sinned through inadvertence or ignorance; thus you shall make atonement for the temple.
- 21
- On the fourteenth day of the first month you shall observe the feast of the Passover; for seven days unleavened bread is to be eaten.
- 22
- On that day the prince shall offer on his own behalf, and on behalf of all the people of the land, a bull as a sin offering.
- 23
- On each of the seven days of the feast he shall offer as a holocaust to the LORD seven bulls and seven rams without blemish, and as a sin offering he shall offer one male goat each day.
- 24
- 3 As a cereal offering he shall offer one ephah for each bull and one ephah for each ram; and he shall offer one hin of oil for each ephah.
- 25
- On the fifteenth day of the seventh month, the feast day, and for seven days, he shall perform the same rites, making the same sin offerings, the same holocausts, the same cereal offerings and offerings of oil.
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1 [9-12] Besides the land monopoly fostered by royal greed and collusion with the wealthy (Micah 2:2; Isaiah 3:12-15; 5:8-10), one grave social evil of preexilic Israel was dishonesty in business; cf Hosea 12:8; Amos 8:5. Ephah: a dry measure; liquid measure: in Hebrew, a "bath," standardized according to the homer (a dry measure of about 10 bushels, or 80 gallons). In Ezekiel 45:12 reference is made to the change in value of the mina: before the exile it was valued at 50 shekels, but afterward, in imitation of Babylonian practice, the 60-shekel mina was adopted. The shekel was a unit of weight slightly less than half an ounce. As a monetary unit, the value obviously differed greatly, depending on whether it was a gold or a silver shekel.
2 [14] Kor: both a liquid and a dry measure, corresponding to the homer.
3 [24] Hin: a sixth part of the liquid measure called a bath.
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