Eze 46 | EE | STEP | This is what the LORD God says: ‘You must keep shut the door of the inside yard that opens to the east. You must do this for the six (6) days that you work. You must only open it on the seventh (7th) day and on the New Moon day.

Ezekiel 46

1 This is what the LORD God says: ‘You must keep shut the door of the inside yard that opens to the east. You must do this for the six (6) days that you work. You must only open it on the seventh (7th) day and on the New Moon day. 2 The king must go through the entrance room by the gate. It is his way in from the outside yard. He must stand by the gate’s posts. The priests must burn his sacrifice and offer his fellowship gifts. He can worship there and then go out. But they must not shut the gate until the evening. 3 The people must also worship the LORD in front of the gate each Sabbath and New Moon feast. 4 Every Sabbath day, the king must bring a male sheep and six (6) young male sheep. The priests will burn them as a sacrifice to the LORD. None of them should have anything wrong with them. 5 The king must bring an ephah of grain to sacrifice with the male sheep. He can give as much grain as he likes with the young sheep. And he must give a hin of oil with each ephah. 6 On the day of the New Moon he must offer a young male cow, a male sheep and six (6) young sheep. None of them can have anything wrong with it. 7 He must give an ephah of grain with the cow and an ephah with the sheep. He can give as much as he chooses with the young sheep. And he must give a hin of oil with each ephah of grain. 8 When the king goes in, he must go through the gate’s entrance room. And he must go out by the same way.

9 The people will come to worship the LORD at the feast times that I give to them.

Then if they come in by the north gate they must go out by the south gate. And if they come in by the south gate they must go out by the north gate. Nobody can go out of the gate through which he came in. He must go out by the opposite gate. 10 The king must go with them. He must go in when they go in. He must go out when they go out.

11 They must offer an ephah of grain with a male cow. And they must give an ephah with a sheep. They can give as much as they choose with a young sheep. They must give a hin of oil with each ephah.

This is what they must do on feast days. They must do it on each of the days that I have given to them for worship. 12 They must open the east gate for the king. He may want to make a special offering to the LORD. He can go in. He can make his burnt offering or fellowship offering as he does on the Sabbath day. Then he must go out and they will shut the gate after him.

13 Every day, you must give a sheep one year old to burn as an offering to the LORD. It must have nothing that is wrong with it. You must sacrifice this sheep every morning, day after day. 14 And you must give a sixth (1/6) of an ephah of grain with it. And you must put with it a third (1/3) of a hin of oil. That is to keep the flour together. You must continue to offer the grain to the LORD until the end of time. 15 Every morning, you must offer the young sheep, the grain and the oil for a burnt sacrifice.

16 The king can make a gift to one of his sons. He can make it from the land that I gave him.’ This is what the LORD God says, ‘That land will belong to the son and to his children and grandchildren. It will become their land for all time. 17 But the king may give land to one of his servants. The servant can keep the land until the year of jubilee. (See Leviticus 25:10.) Then they must give the land back to the king. The land belongs only to the king and his sons for all time. 18 The king must not take any land that belongs to the people. He can give only land that I have given to him to his sons. Nobody among the people must be without his land.’

19 The man took me through the entrance by the gate. We came into the priest‘s holy rooms. These opened to the north. He showed me a place at the west end. 20 ‘This is the place where the priests will cook the offerings to pay for sin and other wrong things’, he said. ‘They will bake the grain offerings here, too. In this way, they will not have to go into the outside yard. If they did that, they would make the people holy.’

21 ^{▼▼This verse is empty because in this translation its contents have been moved to form part of verse Ezk 46:22.} ^{▼▼In this translation, this verse contains text which in some other translations appears in verses Ezk 46:21-Ezk 46:22.}22 Then he took me to the outside yard. He showed me the four (4) corners. In each corner I saw another yard twenty (20) metres long and fifteen (15) metres wide. 23 These smaller yards had walls round them. Under the walls they had made places for fire.

24 ‘The temple priests will work in these kitchens. Here they will cook the people’s sacrifices’, he said to me.