42 Next the man sent me out to the outer courtyard on the northern side, and he brought me to rooms in front of the outer courtyard and the northern outer wall. 2 That building with a north-facing entrance was fifty-four metres long and twenty-seven metres wide. 3 Some of those rooms faced the inner courtyard and were eleven metres away from the sanctuary. There were three levels of rooms, and the ones above looked down on the ones below and were open to them, having a walkway. Some of the rooms looked out onto the outer courtyard. 4 A five metre wide passage ran in front of the rooms and was fifty-four[fn] metres long. The rooms’ doors faced north. 5 But the upper halls were smaller, because the walkways there used more space than they did in the bottom and middle levels of the building. 6 The third storey halls had no pillars (unlike the courtyards), so the rooms at the highest level were smaller than those on the bottom and middle levels. 7 The outside wall ran along the rooms toward the outer courtyard that was in front of the rooms, and was twenty-seven metres long. 8 The row of rooms along the outer courtyard was twenty-seven metres long, and the row of rooms facing the sanctuary was fifty-four metres long. 9 There was an entrance to the lowest rooms from the eastern side, coming from the outer courtyard. 10 There was also a set of rooms along the outer courtyard wall on the eastern side of the outer courtyard, in front of the sanctuary’s inner courtyard, 11 with a walkway in front of them. They looked similar to the rooms on the northern side and had the same measurements, as well as the same exits and arrangements and doors. 12 There were also doorways into rooms on the south side that were similar to what was on the north side. There was an inside passage with an outer door—the passage had doors into all the rooms. At the eastern end of the passage there was a door from the outside.

13 Then the man told me, “The northern rooms and the southern rooms that are in front of the outer courtyard are sacred rooms where the priests who work nearest to Yahweh may eat the very sacred food. They’ll put the very sacred things there—the food offering, the sin offering, and the guilt offering—because it’s a very sacred area. 14 When the priests enter it, they must not go back out of the sacred area to the outer court, without laying aside the clothes in which they served, since those clothes are sacred. So they must dress in other clothes before going back into the public areas.”