Ezekiel 45:9-16

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 was about ten times as great as now). The prince derived his revenues from a tax upon the people of 1 per cent, of oil, 1⅔? of wheat and barley, and ½ per cent of lambs; but from these revenues he had the obligation of providing for the offerings required in public worship. (In Ezekiel 45:15 for fat pastures read, with LXX, families.)