Ezekiel 46: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

The Lord gives rules for the east gate of the inner courtyard, which stays shut on the six workdays and is opened on the Sabbath and the new moon, and sets out the offerings the prince and the people bring on those days and at the appointed feasts. A daily morning burnt offering with its grain offering and oil is commanded as a lasting rule. Limits are placed on the prince's land dealings: a gift to a son stays in the family, a gift to a servant returns to the prince in the year of freedom, and the prince may not push people off their own property. The man guiding Ezekiel then shows him where the priests cook the offerings and the four corner courtyards in the outer court where the people's sacrifices are boiled.

Claim by Claim

1. 46:1
   • The Lord GOD speaks the following words.
   • The gate of the inner court that faces east is to be kept shut during the six working days.
   • On the sabbath day that gate is to be opened.
   • On the day of the new moon that gate is to be opened.
2. 46:2
   • The prince is to enter by way of the porch of that gate from outside.
   • The prince is to stand by the doorpost of the gate.
   • The priests are to prepare the prince's burnt offering and his peace offerings.
   • The prince is to bow down in worship at the threshold of the gate.
   • The prince is then to go out.
   • The gate is not to be shut until evening.
3. 46:3
   • The people of the land are to bow down in worship at the entrance of that gate before the LORD.
   • The people of the land are to do this on the sabbaths and on the new moons.
4. 46:4
   • The burnt offering the prince presents to the LORD on the sabbath day is to be six lambs without blemish and one ram without blemish.
5. 46:5
   • The grain offering with the ram is to be an ephah.
   • The grain offering with the lambs is to be as much as the prince is able to give.
   • A hin of oil goes with each ephah.
6. 46:6
   • On the day of the new moon the offering is to be a young bull, six lambs, and a ram.
   • These animals are to be without blemish.
7. 46:7
   • The prince is to provide a grain offering of an ephah with the bull.
   • The prince is to provide an ephah with the ram.
   • With the lambs he is to provide as much as his hand can reach.
   • A hin of oil goes with each ephah.
8. 46:8
   • When the prince enters, he is to go in by way of the porch of the gate.
   • The prince is to go out by the same way he came in.
9. 46:9
   • The people of the land are to come before the LORD at the appointed feasts.
   • Whoever enters by way of the north gate to worship is to go out by way of the south gate.
   • Whoever enters by way of the south gate is to go out by way of the north gate.
   • No one is to return by way of the gate through which he entered.
   • Each is to go out by the gate opposite the one he entered.
10. 46:10
    • The prince is to be among the people.
    • When the people go in, the prince is to go in.
    • When the people go out, they are to go out together.
11. 46:11
    • At the festivals and at the appointed feasts the grain offering is to be an ephah with a bull.
    • At those times the grain offering is to be an ephah with a ram.
    • With the lambs the grain offering is to be as much as he is able to give.
    • A hin of oil goes with each ephah.
12. 46:12
    • The prince may make a freewill offering to the LORD, either a burnt offering or peace offerings.
    • When he does, the gate that faces east is to be opened for him.
    • He is to prepare his burnt offering and his peace offerings as he does on the sabbath day.
    • Then he is to go out.
    • The gate is to be shut after he goes out.
13. 46:13
    • A lamb of its first year without blemish is to be prepared as a burnt offering to the LORD each day.
    • It is to be prepared every morning.
14. 46:14
    • A grain offering is to be prepared with the lamb every morning.
    • The grain offering is to be a sixth part of an ephah.
    • A third part of a hin of oil is to be used to moisten the fine flour.
    • This is a grain offering to the LORD.
    • This is a perpetual ordinance, to be done continually.
15. 46:15
    • They are to prepare the lamb, the grain offering, and the oil every morning.
    • This is a continual burnt offering.
16. 46:16
    • The Lord GOD speaks the following words.
    • If the prince gives a gift to any of his sons, the gift is that son's inheritance.
    • The gift shall belong to the prince's sons.
    • It is to be their property by inheritance.
17. 46:17
    • If the prince gives a gift from his inheritance to one of his servants, it shall belong to that servant until the year of liberty.
    • In the year of liberty the gift shall return to the prince.
    • The prince's inheritance is to belong to his sons.
18. 46:18
    • The prince is not to take any of the people's inheritance by oppression.
    • The prince is not to thrust the people out of their possession.
    • The prince is to give his sons an inheritance out of his own possession.
    • The purpose is that the LORD's people not be scattered, each man from his own possession.
19. 46:19
    • The one guiding Ezekiel brought him through the entry at the side of the gate.
    • He brought him to the holy chambers belonging to the priests.
    • Those chambers face north.
    • There was a place at the rear of the chambers, toward the west.
20. 46:20
    • The guide said to Ezekiel that this is the place where the priests are to boil the guilt offering and the sin offering.
    • It is also the place where they are to bake the grain offering.
    • The purpose is that they not carry these offerings out into the outer court.
    • Carrying them out would transmit holiness to the people.
21. 46:21
    • The guide brought Ezekiel out into the outer court.
    • He led him past the four corners of the court.
    • In each corner of the court there was a court.
22. 46:22
    • In the four corners of the court there were enclosed courts.
    • Each such court was forty cubits long.
    • Each such court was thirty cubits wide.
    • All four of them were of one measure.
23. 46:23
    • There was a row of masonry running around inside each of the four courts.
    • Boiling places were built under the rows all around.
24. 46:24
    • The guide said to Ezekiel that these are the buildings of those who boil.
    • In them the ministers of the house are to boil the sacrifice of the people.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

46:1

The temple in this vision has two courtyards: an outer one the people could enter, and an inner one around the altar reserved for the priests. "New moon": the first day of the lunar month. Hebrew months began when the new crescent was sighted, and that day was marked as a festival with extra sacrifices.

46:2

"Prince" translates Hebrew *nasi*, meaning leader or chief. Ezekiel uses this word rather than "king" throughout his temple vision for the ruler of the restored nation. A "burnt offering" was an animal burned whole on the altar, with none of it eaten. "Peace offerings" (sometimes called fellowship offerings) were different: part was burned, part went to the priests, and the rest was eaten as a meal by the person who brought it.

46:3

"The people of the land" was a standing phrase for the ordinary landholding population, as distinct from the ruler, the priests and the officials.

46:4

"Nothing wrong with them" renders a technical term meaning free of physical defect, no injury, disease, or deformity. Only unimpaired animals could be offered.

46:5

An ephah was a dry measure of roughly 22 liters, about two-thirds of a bushel. A hin was a liquid measure of roughly 3.7 liters, about a gallon. So the ratio here is about a gallon of olive oil to every two-thirds of a bushel of flour. A "grain offering" was flour mixed with oil, presented alongside an animal sacrifice.

46:6

"Bullock" in the King James means a young bull, not a castrated ox.

46:9

The "appointed feasts" were the fixed annual festivals (Passover and Unleavened Bread, Weeks, and Booths) when Israelites traveled to the temple. The instruction is about crowd movement: worshipers cross straight through rather than turning back against the flow.

46:12

A voluntary or freewill offering was one nobody owed. The calendar required the Sabbath and new moon sacrifices, but this is an extra the prince chooses to bring, so the east gate is opened specially for him and shut again as soon as he leaves rather than standing open all day.

46:13

This daily lamb was the standing public sacrifice offered on behalf of the whole nation, morning by morning, apart from anything an individual brought.

46:14

"Fine flour" was wheat flour ground and sifted to the finest grade, the most costly kind.

46:16

"Inheritance" here means ancestral land, held permanently by a family and handed down the male line. Israelite law treated such land as belonging to the family in perpetuity rather than as ordinary property to be bought and sold freely.

46:17

The "year of freedom" is the jubilee. Under the law in Leviticus 25, every fiftieth year land that had been sold or given away reverted to the family that originally held it, and debt-slaves were released. So a gift to a servant was in effect a long lease, not a permanent transfer.

46:18

Kings seizing ordinary people's land was a familiar abuse, not a theoretical one; the story of Ahab taking Naboth's vineyard in 1 Kings 21 is the classic case. Because a family's land was its livelihood and its place in its tribe, losing it meant being pushed out of the community altogether, which is what "scattered every man from his possession" describes.

46:19

These "holy rooms" were chambers set aside for the priests, where they ate their portions of the offerings, stored the sacred garments, and kept the offerings apart from ordinary use.

46:20

Two distinct sacrifices. The "sin offering" (also called a purification offering) removed ritual pollution from the sanctuary and the worshiper. The "guilt offering" (or reparation offering) covered wrongs that also required paying restitution. Priests ate portions of both, which is why the meat had to be cooked. "Pass the holiness on to the people": in this system, contact with what had been dedicated to God transferred a state of holiness that brought restrictions and danger to anyone not consecrated to handle it. Keeping the cooking inside the priests' area prevented that contact.

46:22

A cubit was the length of a forearm, roughly eighteen inches. Ezekiel's measurements use a longer cubit, a cubit plus a handbreadth, about twenty inches (see Ezekiel 40:5). Each corner courtyard would then be about 68 by 51 feet, or 21 by 16 meters.

46:23

"Boiling places" are built-in hearths, fireplaces set into the stone at the base of the wall with room for a pot over each one.

46:24

"Those who serve at the temple" are the Levites, temple staff ranked below the priests, who in this vision handle the people's sacrifices for them.