Rooms for the priests
42
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 long and 87.5 feet wide. Its doorway faced north. 3 In that building there were rooms that faced the inner courtyard. The distance between those rooms and the temple was 34 feet. The rooms were built on three levels. There were rooms that overlooked the open area of the outer courtyard. 4 Between the two sets of rooms there was a walkway that was 17.5 feet wide and 175 feet long. All its doors were on the north side. 5 Each of the upper sets of rooms was narrower than the set 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 there were in the courtyard, because those rooms were supported by the walls of the rooms on the first and second levels. 7 There was an outer wall that separated those rooms from the outer courtyard; it was 87.5 feet long. 8 The row of rooms that were along the outer courtyard was 87.5 feet long, and the set of rooms that faced the temple was 175 feet long. 9 The lowest set 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 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 and measured all the surrounding area. 16-19 He measured the four sides of the area. There was a wall around the area that was 875 feet long. 20 That wall separated the area which was sacred from the areas that were not sacred.