43:18 Then he said to me: “Son of man, this is what the sovereign Lord says: These are the statutes of the altar: On the day it is built to offer up burnt offerings on it and to sprinkle blood on it, 1
44:15 “‘But the Levitical priests, the descendants of Zadok 2 who kept the charge of my sanctuary when the people of Israel went astray from me, will approach me to minister to me; they will stand before me to offer me the fat and the blood, declares the sovereign Lord.
45:1 “‘When you allot the land as an inheritance, you will offer an allotment 3 to the Lord, a holy portion from the land; the length will be eight and a quarter miles 4 and the width three and one-third miles. 5 This entire area will be holy. 6
1 sn For the “sprinkling of blood,” see Lev 1:5, 11; 8:19; 9:12.
2 sn Zadok was a descendant of Aaron through Eleazar (1 Chr 6:50-53), who served as a priest during David’s reign (2 Sam 8:17).
3 tn Heb “a contribution.”
4 tn Heb “twenty-five thousand cubits” (i.e., 13.125 kilometers). The measuring units here are the Hebrew “long” cubit, consisting of a cubit (about 18 inches or 45 cm) and a handbreadth (about 3 inches or 7.5 cm), for a total of 21 inches (52.5 cm). Because modern readers are not familiar with the cubit as a unit of measurement, and due to the additional complication of the “long” cubit as opposed to the regular cubit, all measurements have been converted to American standard miles (one mile = 5,280 feet), with the Hebrew measurements and the metric equivalents given in the notes.
5 tc The LXX reads “twenty thousand cubits.”
tn Heb “ten thousand cubits” (i.e., 5.25 kilometers).
6 tn Heb “holy it is in all its territory round about.”