1 And when you are making a distribution of the land, by the decision of the Lord, for your heritage, you are to make an offering to the Lord of a part of the land as holy: it is to be twenty-five thousand long and twenty thousand wide: all the land inside these limits is to be holy.
2 Of this, a square five hundred long and five hundred wide is to be for the holy place, with a space of fifty cubits all round it.
3 And of this measure, let a space be measured, twenty-five thousand long and ten thousand wide: in it there will be the holy place, even the most holy.
4 This holy part of the land is to be for the priests, the servants of the holy place, who come near to the Lord to do his work; it is to be a place for their houses and for grass-land and for cattle.
5 A space of land twenty-five thousand long and ten thousand wide is to be for the Levites, the servants of the house, a property for themselves, for towns for their living-places.
6 And as the property for the town you are to have a part five thousand wide and twenty-five thousand long, by the side of the offering of the holy part of the land: this is to be for all the children of Israel.
7 And for the ruler there is to be a part on one side and on the other side of the holy offering and of the property of the town, in front of the holy offering and in front of the property of the town on the west of it and on the east: measured in the same line as one of the parts of the land, from its limit on the west to its limit on the east of the land.
8 And this will be his heritage in Israel: and my rulers will no longer be cruel masters to my people; but they will give the land as a heritage to the children of Israel by their tribes.
9 This is what the Lord has said: Let this be enough for you, O rulers of Israel: let there be an end of violent behaviour and wasting; do what is right, judging uprightly; let there be no more driving out of my people, says the Lord.
10 Have true scales and a true ephah and a true bath.
11 The ephah and the bath are to be of the same measure, so that the bath is equal to a tenth of a homer, and the ephah to a tenth of a homer: the unit of measure is to be a homer.
12 And the shekel is to be twenty gerahs: five shekels are five, and ten shekels are ten, and your maneh is to be fifty shekels
13 This is the offering you are to give: a sixth of an ephah out of a homer of wheat, and a sixth of an ephah out of a homer of barley;
14 And the fixed measure of oil is to be a tenth of a bath from the cor, for ten baths make up the cor;
15 And one lamb from the flock out of every two hundred, from all the families of Israel, for a meal offering and for a burned offering and for peace-offerings, to take away their sin, says the Lord.
16 All the people are to give this offering to the ruler.
17 And the ruler will be responsible for the burned offering and the meal offering and the drink offering, at the feasts and the new moons and the Sabbaths, at all the fixed feasts of the children of Israel: he will give the sin-offering and meal offering and burned offering and the peace-offerings, to take away the sin of the children of Israel.
18 This is what the Lord has said: In the first month, on the first day of the month, you are to take a young ox without any mark on him, and you are to make the holy place clean.
19 And the priest is to take some of the blood of the sin-offering and put it on the uprights at the sides of the doors of the house, and on the four angles of the shelf of the altar, and on the sides of the doorway of the inner square.
20 And this you are to do on the seventh day of the month for everyone who is in error and for the feeble-minded: you are to make the house free from sin.
21 In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month, you are to have the Passover, a feast of seven days; unleavened bread is to be your food.
22 And on that day the ruler is to give for himself and for all the people of the land an ox for a sin-offering.
23 And on the seven days of the feast he is to give a burned offering to the Lord, seven oxen and seven sheep without any mark on them, every day for seven days; and a he-goat every day for a sin-offering.
24 And he is to give a meal offering, an ephah for every ox and an ephah for every sheep and a hin of oil to every ephah.
25 In the seventh month, on the fifteenth day of the month, at the feast, he is to give the same for seven days; the sin-offering, the burned offering, the meal offering, and the oil as before.
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible » Commentary on Ezekiel 45
Commentary on Ezekiel 45 Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
CHAPTER 45
Eze 45:1-25. Allotment of the Land for the Sanctuary, the City, and the Prince.
1. offer an oblation—from a Hebrew root to "heave" or "raise"; when anything was offered to God, the offerer raised the hand. The special territorial division for the tribes is given in the forty-seventh and forty-eighth chapters. Only Jehovah's portion is here subdivided into its three parts: (1) that for the sanctuary (Eze 45:2, 3); (2) that for the priests (Eze 45:4); (3) that for the Levites (Eze 45:5). Compare Eze 48:8-13.
five and twenty thousand reeds, &c.—So English Version rightly fills the ellipsis (compare Note, see on Eze 42:16). Hence "cubits" are mentioned in Eze 45:2, not here, implying that there alone cubits are meant. Taking each reed at twelve feet, the area of the whole would be a square of sixty miles on each side. The whole forming a square betokens the settled stability of the community and the harmony of all classes. "An holy portion of the land" (Eze 45:1) comprised the whole length, and only two-fifths of the breadth. The outer territory in its distribution harmonizes with the inner and more sacred arrangements of the sanctuary. No room is to be given for oppression (see Eze 45:8), all having ample provision made for their wants and comforts. All will mutually co-operate without constraint or contention.
7. The prince's possession is to consist of two halves, one on the west, the other on the east, of the sacred territory. The prince, as head of the holy community, stands in closest connection with the sanctuary; his possession, therefore, on both sides must adjoin that which was peculiarly the Lord's [Fairbairn].
12. The standard weights were lost when the Chaldeans destroyed the temple. The threefold enumeration of shekels (twenty, twenty-five, fifteen) probably refers to coins of different value, representing respectively so many shekels, the three collectively making up a maneh. By weighing these together against the maneh, a test was afforded whether they severally had their proper weight: sixty shekels in all, containing one coin a fourth of the whole (fifteen shekels), another a third (twenty shekels), another a third and a twelfth (twenty-five shekels) [Menochius]. The Septuagint reads, "fifty shekels shall be your maneh."
13-15. In these oblations there is a progression as to the relation between the kind and the quantity: of the corn, the sixth of a tenth, that is, a sixtieth part of the quantity specified; of the oil, the tenth of a tenth, that is, an hundredth part; and of the flock, one from every two hundred.
18. The year is to begin with a consecration service, not mentioned under the Levitical law; but an earnest of it is given in the feast of dedication of the second temple, which celebrated its purification by Judas Maccabeus, after its defilement by Antiochus.
20. for him that is simple—for sins of ignorance (Le 4:2, 13, 27).
21. As a new solemnity, the feast of consecration is to prepare for the passover; so the passover itself is to have different sacrifices from those of the Mosaic law. Instead of one ram and seven lambs for the daily burnt offering, there are to be seven bullocks and seven rams. So also whereas the feast of tabernacles had its own offerings, which diminished as the days of the feast advanced, here the same are appointed as on the passover. Thus it is implied that the letter of the law is to give place to its spirit, those outward rites of Judaism having no intrinsic efficacy, but symbolizing the spiritual truths of Messiah's kingdom, as for instance the perfect holiness which is to characterize it. Compare 1Co 5:7, 8, as to our spiritual "passover," wherein, at the Lord's supper, we feed on Christ by faith, accompanied with "the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth." Literal ordinances, though not slavishly bound to the letter of the law, will set forth the catholic and eternal verities of Messiah's kingdom.