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.)
Ezekiel 45:9-16
9 Thus saith the Lord GOD; Let it suffice you, O princes of Israel: remove violence and spoil, and execute judgment and justice, take away your exactionsb from my people, saith the Lord GOD.
10 Ye 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 an homer, and the ephah the tenth part of an homer: the measure thereof shall be after the homer.
12 And the shekel shall be twenty gerahs: twenty shekels, five and twenty shekels, fifteen shekels, shall be your maneh.
13 This is the oblation that ye shall offer; the sixth part of an ephah of an homer of wheat, and ye shall give the sixth part of an ephah of an homer of barley:
14 Concerning the ordinance of oil, the bath of oil, ye shall offer the tenth part of a bath out of the cor, which is an homer of ten baths; for ten baths are an homer:
15 And one lambc out of the flock, out of two hundred, out of the fat pastures of Israel; for a meat offering, and for a burnt offering, and for peace offerings, to make reconciliation for them, saith the Lord GOD.
16 All the people of the land shall give this oblation for the prince in Israel.