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42
Rooms for the priests
1 Then in the vision the man led me out of the inner courtyard, through the entrance on the north side. We entered the outer courtyard and came to a building that was built against the north wall of the inner courtyard. 2 That building was ◄175 feet/53 meters► long and ◄87-1/2 feet/26.5 meters► wide. Its doorway faced north. 3 In that building were two rows of rooms, built on three levels, that faced each other. One row of rooms was built against the wall of the inner courtyard and the other row was built against the wall toward the outer courtyard. The building was 34 feet from the temple. 4 Between the two rows of rooms there was a walkway that was ◄17-1/2 feet/5.3 meters► wide and ◄175 feet/53 meters► long. All its doors were on the north side. 5 Each of the upper rows of rooms was narrower than the row of rooms below them, because the upper rows needed to have a walkway in front of them. 6 The rooms on the upper levels had no pillars to support them like the ones in the courtyard. Instead, each of those row of rooms were supported by the walls of the row of rooms on the level below. 7 The wall of the building extended 87-1/2 feet past the set of rooms built along the outer courtyard, separating all the rooms from the outer courtyard. 8 The row of rooms that were along the outer courtyard was ◄87-1/2 feet/26.5 meters► long, and the set of rooms that faced the temple was ◄175 feet/53 meters► long. 9 The lowest row of rooms had an entrance from the outer courtyard, on the east side.
10 On the south side, along the wall of the outer courtyard, next to the temple courtyard, was a a building with two rows of rooms, 11 with a walkway between them. Those rooms were like the rooms on the north side: they were the same length and width, and had the same kind of entrances. 12 The doorways on the south side were similar to the doorways on the north side. There was an entrance in the wall that faced the doors of the set of rooms, and there was an entrance on the east side, at the end of the inside walkway.
13 Then the man said to me, “These rooms that overlook the temple on the north and south sides are holy. Here the priests who offer sacrifices to Yahweh will eat their portions of the sacred offerings. Because these rooms are holy, they will be used to store the sacred offerings: the grain for the grain offerings, the offerings for the sins that people have committed, and offerings in order that people will no longer be guilty for having sinned. 14 When the priests leave the temple, they will not be allowed to immediately enter the outer courtyard. First, they must remove the clothes that they had been wearing inside the temple, because those clothes are holy. They must put on other clothes before they enter the parts of the temple area where the other people gather.”
15 When the man had finished measuring the inside of the temple area, he led me out through the east entrance of the outer courtyard and measured all the way around the temple area. 16-19 He measured the four sides of the area. There was a wall around the area that was ◄875 feet/265 meters► long on each side. 20 That wall separated the area which was sacred/holy from the areas that were not sacred.

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© 2008-2016 Ellis W. Deibler, Jr.