Study Desk

For seven days they are to make offerings to take away sin from the altar and to make it clean; so they are to make it holy.

And say to the uncontrolled children of Israel, This is what the Lord has said: O you children of Israel, let it be enough for you, among the disgusting things which you have done,

For this cause the Lord has said, No man from a strange land, without circumcision of heart and flesh, of all those who are living among the children of Israel, is to come into my holy place.

But as for the Levites, who went far from me, when Israel went out of the right way, turning away from me to go after their images; their punishment will come on them.

But they may be caretakers in my holy place, and overseers at the doors of the house, doing the work of the house: they will put to death the burned offering and the beasts offered for the people, and they will take their place before them as their servants.

Because they did this work for them before their images, and became a cause of sin to the children of Israel; for this cause my hand has been lifted up against them, says the Lord, and their punishment will be on them.

And they will not come near me to do the work of priests to me, or come near any of my holy things, or the things which are most holy: but their shame will be on them, and the punishment for the disgusting things which they have done.

But I will make them responsible for the care of the house and all its work and everything which is done in it.

But as for the priests, the sons of Zadok, who took care of my holy place when the children of Israel were turned away from me, they are to come near me to do my work, they will take their places before me, offering to me the fat and the blood, says the Lord;

They are not to come near any dead person so as to become unclean: but for a father or mother or son or daughter or brother or for a sister who has no husband, they may make themselves unclean.

And after he has been made clean, seven days are to be numbered for him.

Their food is to be the meal offering and the sin-offering and the offering for error; and everything given specially to the Lord in Israel will be theirs.

And the best of all the first-fruits of everything, and every offering which is lifted up of all your offerings, will be for the priests: and you are to give the priest the first of your bread-making, so causing a blessing to come on your house.

The priests may not take for food any bird or beast which has come to a natural death or whose death has been caused by another animal.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.