16. The altar hearth is square, twelve cubits long and twelve cubits wide.
17. The upper ledge also is square, fourteen cubits long and fourteen cubits wide. All around the altar is a gutter of one cubit with a rim of half a cubit. The steps of the altar face east.”
18. Then he said to me, “Son of man, this is what the Sovereign Lord says: These will be the regulations for sacrificing burnt offerings and splashing blood against the altar when it is built:
19. You are to give a young bull as a sin offering to the Levitical priests of the family of Zadok, who come near to minister before me, declares the Sovereign Lord.
20. You are to take some of its blood and put it on the four horns of the altar and on the four corners of the upper ledge and all around the rim, and so purify the altar and make atonement for it.
21. You are to take the bull for the sin offering and burn it in the designated part of the temple area outside the sanctuary.
22. “On the second day you are to offer a male goat without defect for a sin offering, and the altar is to be purified as it was purified with the bull.