Ezekiel 45:21 → Numbers 29:12

Ezekiel 45:21 legislates the Passover of the first month; Numbers 29:12 opens the offerings of the seventh-month feast — "On the fifteenth day of the seventh month... you shall observe a חַג (chag, "feast") to the LORD for seven days." In Ezekiel that autumn feast is not legislated on its own terms at all. Verse 25 reaches it by extension: the prince "is to make the same provision" there that 45:21-24 prescribed for Passover. The contrast with Numbers is sharp at precisely that point. Numbers 29 gives the autumn feast the most elaborate offering schedule in the Torah — thirteen bulls on the first day descending to seven on the seventh, seventy in all, with two rams and fourteen lambs daily and a distinct eighth-day remainder (29:35-36) — and frames the whole with a מִקְרָא־קֹדֶשׁ (miqra-qodesh, "sacred assembly") and a prohibition of work. Ezekiel gives it the Passover's flat seven bulls and seven rams, no lambs, no eighth day, no assembly, no work legislation. Numbers scales the sacrifice to the feast; Ezekiel scales every feast to the same provision. The two calendars are answering different questions. Numbers asks what an assembled people owe at each appointed time. Ezekiel asks what makes a defiled house fit to hold any appointed time at all, and answers with atonement (כָּפַר, kaphar, 45:17, 20) supplied by the נָשִׂיא (nasi', "prince"). Ezekiel's is the humbler question and the more hopeful answer, and it is the one the New Testament completes: not a graduated tribute scaled to the occasion, but "one sacrifice for sins" offered "for all time" (Hebrews 10:12), the same on every day of the year.