38-39. Inside the entrance room of the north gate, I saw four tables, two on each side of the room, where the animals to be sacrificed were killed. Just outside this room was a small building used for washing the animals before they were offered as sacrifices to please the Lord or sacrifices for sin or sacrifices to make things right.
40. Four more tables were in the outer courtyard, two on each side of the steps leading into the entrance room.
41. So there was a total of eight tables, four inside and four outside, where the animals were killed,
42-43. and where the meat was placed until it was sacrificed on the altar.Next to the tables in the entrance room were four stone tables fifty centimetres high and seventy-five centimetres square; the equipment used for killing the animals was kept on top of these tables. All around the walls of this room was a seventy-five-millimetre shelf.
44. The man then took me to the inner courtyard, where I saw two buildings, one beside the inner gate on the north and the other beside the inner gate on the south.
45. He said, “The building beside the north gate belongs to the priests who serve in the temple,
46. and the building beside the south gate belongs to those who serve at the altar. All of them are descendants of Zadok and are the only Levites allowed to serve as the Lord's priests.”
47. Now the man measured the inner courtyard; it was fifty metres square. I also saw an altar in front of the temple.
48. We walked to the porch of the temple, and the man measured the doorway of the porch: it was seven metres long, two and a half metres wide, and the distance from the doorway to the wall on either side was one and a half metres.
49. The porch itself was ten metres by six metres, with steps leading up to it. There was a column on each side of these steps.