¹ "Behold, I send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me; and the Lord, whom you seek, will suddenly come to his temple; and the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, behold, he comes!" says Yahweh of Armies.

² "But who can endure the day of his coming? And who will stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner's fire, and like launderer's soap;

³ and he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the sons of Levi, and refine them as gold and silver; and they shall offer to Yahweh offerings in righteousness.

⁴ Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasant to Yahweh, as in the days of old, and as in ancient years.

⁵ I will come near to you to judgment; and I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, and against the adulterers, and against the perjurers, and against those who oppress the hireling in his wages, the widow, and the fatherless, and who deprive the foreigner of justice, and don't fear me," says Yahweh of Armies.

⁶ "For I, Yahweh, don't change; therefore you, sons of Jacob, are not consumed.

⁷ From the days of your fathers you have turned aside from my ordinances, and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will Return to you," says Yahweh of Armies. "But you say, 'How shall we Return?'

⁸ Will a man rob God? Yet you rob me! But you say, 'How have we robbed you?' In tithes and offerings.

⁹ You are cursed with the curse; for you rob me, even this whole nation.

¹⁰ Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house, and test me now in this," says Yahweh of Armies, "if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough for.

¹¹ I will rebuke the devourer for your sakes, and he shall not destroy the fruits of your ground; neither shall your vine cast its fruit before its time in the field," says Yahweh of Armies.

¹² "All nations shall call you blessed, for you will be a delightful land," says Yahweh of Armies.

¹³ "Your words have been stout against me," says Yahweh. "Yet you say, 'What have we spoken against you?'

¹⁴ You have said, 'It is vain to serve God;' and 'What profit is it that we have followed his instructions, and that we have walked mournfully before Yahweh of Armies?

¹⁵ Now we call the proud happy; yes, those who work wickedness are built up; yes, they tempt God, and escape.'

¹⁶ Then those who feared Yahweh spoke one with another; and Yahweh listened, and heard, and a book of memory was written before him, for those who feared Yahweh, and who honored his name.

¹⁷ They shall be mine," says Yahweh of Armies, "my own possession in the day that I make, and I will spare them, as a man spares his own son who serves him.

¹⁸ Then you shall return and discern between the righteous and the wicked, between him who serves God and him who doesn't serve him.

¹ Then he brought me forth into the outer court, the way toward the north: and he brought me into the room that was over against the separate place, and which was over against the building toward the north.

² Before the length of one hundred cubits was the north door, and the breadth was fifty cubits.

³ Over against the twenty [cubits] which belonged to the inner court, and Over against the pavement which belonged to the outer court, was gallery against gallery in the third story.

⁴ Before the rooms was a walk of ten cubits' breadth inward, a way of one cubit; and their doors were toward the north.

⁵ Now the upper rooms were shorter; for the galleries took away from these, more than from the lower and the middle, in the building.

⁶ For they were in three stories, and they didn't have pillars as the pillars of the courts: therefore [the uppermost] was straitened more than the lowest and the middle from the ground.

⁷ The wall that was outside by the side of the rooms, toward the outer court before the rooms, its length was fifty cubits.

⁸ For the length of the rooms that were in the outer court was fifty cubits: and behold, before the temple were one hundred cubits.

⁹ From under these rooms was the entry on the east side, as one goes into them from the outer court.

¹⁰ In the thickness of the wall of the court toward the east, before the separate place, and before the building, there were rooms.

¹¹ The way before them was like the appearance of [the way of] the rooms which were toward the north; according to their length so was their breadth: and all their exits were both according to their fashions, and according to their doors.

¹² According to the doors of the rooms that were toward the south was a door at the head of the way, even the way directly before the wall toward the east, as one enters into them.

¹³ Then he said to me, The north rooms and the south rooms, which are before the separate place, they are the holy rooms, where the priests who are near to Yahweh shall eat the most holy things: there shall they lay the most holy things, and the meal offering, and the sin offering, and the trespass offering; for the place is holy.

¹⁴ When the priests enter in, then shall they not go out of the holy place into the outer court, but there they shall lay their garments in which they minister; for they are holy: and they shall put on other garments, and shall approach to that which pertains to the people.

¹⁵ Now when he had made an end of measuring the inner house, he brought me forth by the way of the gate whose prospect is toward the east, and measured it all around.

¹⁶ He measured on the east side with the measuring reed five hundred reeds, with the measuring reed all around.

¹⁷ He measured on the north side five hundred reeds with the measuring reed all around.

¹⁸ He measured on the south side five hundred reeds with the measuring reed.

¹⁹ He turned about to the west side, and measured five hundred reeds with the measuring reed.

²⁰ He measured it on the four sides: it had a wall around it, the length five hundred, and the breadth five hundred, to make a separation between that which was holy and that which was common.