Yet they shall be ministers in My sanctuary, having charge of the gates of the temple and ministering there. They shall slaughter the burnt offerings and other sacrifices for the people and stand before them to minister to them. Because they ministered before their idols and became a stumbling block of iniquity to the house of Israel, therefore I swore with an uplifted hand concerning them that they would bear the consequences of their iniquity, declares the Lord GOD.
Moreover, stand in the Holy Place by the divisions of the families of your kinsmen the lay people, and by the divisions of the families of the Levites. Slaughter the Passover lambs, consecrate yourselves, and make preparations for your fellow countrymen to carry out the word of the LORD given by Moses."
Significance
Ezekiel 44:11-12 establishes Levitical duties in the eschatological temple that parallel the Levitical arrangements of Josiah's Passover in 2 Chronicles 35:5-6. The Chronicler records Levites standing in the holy place by divisions, slaughtering Passover lambs and preparing sacrifices; Ezekiel assigns the same roles—slaughtering offerings, gatekeeping—but explicitly frames them as a reduced status for Levites who "went astray from Me after their idols" (44:10). By echoing Josiah's exemplary Passover celebration, Ezekiel signals that the eschatological temple's worship will restore the best pre-exilic liturgical practice while adding accountability for the priestly failures that contributed to the temple's destruction.