Ezekiel 45:10

_IN THE LAND SHALL BE HIS POSSESSION IN ISRAEL: AND MY PRINCES SHALL NO MORE OPPRESS MY PEOPLE; AND THE REST OF THE LAND SHALL THEY GIVE TO THE HOUSE OF ISRAEL ACCORDING TO THEIR TRIBES._ No JFB commentary on these verses....

Verse Ezekiel 45:10. _YE SHALL HAVE JUST BALANCES_] This appreciation of _weights, measures_, and _money_ was intended to show them that they must not introduce those to which they had been accustomed in the captivity, but those which God had prescribed to their forefathers. See the notes on the parallel places....

A general exhortation to honesty, expressed by true weights and measures (marginal references). This fitly introduces the strict regulation of quantities in the prescribed offerings....

EXPOSITION From the sustenance of the priests (Ezekiel 44:29-26), the new Torah naturally passes in the present chapter to the maintenance of the temple service as a whole, setting forth in the first section of the chapter (Ezekiel 45:1) the portions of land that should be allotted respectively to the sanctuary, _i.e._ for the temple buildings, and the priests' and Levites' houses (Ezekiel 45:1), to the city and its inhabitants, that they might be able to discharge their religious and civil obligations on the one hand to the temple, and on the other hand to the state (Ezekiel 45:6), and to the prince to e

YE SHALL HAVE JUST BALANCES,.... That is, take care that true weights and just measures be used in trade and commerce, that so one man may not impose upon and cheat another; which is the business of the civil magistrate to look after: AND A JUST EPHAH, AND A JUST BATH; and not make the ephah small, and the shekel great, and falsifying the balances by deceit, as some did, Amos 8:5 the "ephah" was a measure for dry things, as wheat, barley, c. and the "bath" for liquid things, as wine oil, c. as Jarchi and Kimchi observe see Leviticus 19:35....

CHAPTER 45 _ 1. The portions of the priests, the Levites, of the whole house of Israel, and the prince (Ezekiel 45:1) _ 2. Concerning the prince (Ezekiel 45:9) 3. The feast of Passover and the feast of tabernacles (Ezekiel 45:18)...

THE PRINCE. (_His duties and rights._) The ominous allusion in Ezekiel 45:8 to the oppression of Israel by her kings in the past leads Ezekiel to an earnest exhortation to have done with injustice and to maintain inflexible moral principles in civil and commercial life for the days to come. This was to be secured by standardising the weights and measures, so that it would be beyond the power of the reigning monarch to alter them in his own interests. Five shekels shall be five (not less) and ten ten, and fifty shall be your mina. (So LXX Alex.) The exactions of Ezekiel 45:9 are such iniquitous expulsions as Naboth had suffered at the hands of Ahab (1 Kings 21). The homer was about 11 bushels (dry measure) and 90 gallons (liquid measure): the shekel about 2 Samuel 6_ d._ (though its purchasing power

YE SHALL HAVE, &c. Reference to Pentateuch (Leviticus 19:36). ephah. See App-51., bath. See App-51....

The dues to be given the prince, and his obligations to provide the materials for the ritual. Ezekiel 45:9 _seq_. The former unjust and irregular exactions of the princes shall cease. These exactions had not only been oppressive in their nature, but unjust and arbitrary from want of a fixed standard in weights, measures and currency....

_1. The rights and duties of the prince (45:9-17_) TRANSLATION (9) Thus says the Lord GOD: Let it suffice you, O prince of Israel: remove violence and spoil, and execute justice and righteousness; take away your exactions from My people, (oracle of the Lord GOD). (10) You shall have just balances, and a just ephah, and a just bath. (11) The ephah and the bath shall be of one measure, that the bath may contain the tenth part of a homer, and the ephah the tenth part of a homer: the measure thereof shall be after the homer. (12) And the shekel shall be twenty gerahs; twenty shekels, twenty-five shekels, fifteen shekels, shall be your maneh. (13) This is the oblation that you shall offer: the sixth part of an ephah from a homer of wheat; and you shall give the sixth part of an ephah from a homer of barley; (14) and the set portion of oil, of the bath of oil, the tenth part of a bath out of...