Ezekiel 41

The TorahRooted Bible (TRB), translated directly from the Hebrew and Greek.

The temple and the Most Holy Place

¹ Then he brought me into the temple and measured the jambs, six cubits wide on this side and six cubits wide on that side, the width of the tent. ² The width of the entrance was ten cubits, and the sides of the entrance were five cubits on this side and five cubits on that side; and he measured its length, forty cubits, and its width, twenty cubits. ³ Then he went inside and measured the jamb of the entrance, two cubits; and the entrance, six cubits; and the width of the entrance, seven cubits. ⁴ And he measured its length, twenty cubits, and its width, twenty cubits, in front of the temple; and he said to me, "This is the Most Holy Place."

The side chambers

⁵ Then he measured the wall of the house, six cubits; and the width of the side chambers, four cubits, all around the house on every side. ⁶ The side chambers were in three stories, one above another, thirty in each story; and there were offsets in the wall of the house all around for the side chambers, so that they would be supported, yet not be supported in the wall of the house. ⁷ The side chambers became wider and went around higher and higher, for the encircling of the house went up higher and higher all around the house; therefore the house was wider toward the top, and so one went up from the lowest story to the highest by the middle one. ⁸ I saw also that the house had a raised platform all around; the foundations of the side chambers were a full reed, six cubits to the edge. ⁹ The width of the wall of the side chambers on the outside was five cubits; and there was an open space by the side chambers of the house. ¹⁰ And between the chambers there was a width of twenty cubits all around the house on every side. ¹¹ The entrances of the side chambers opened onto the open space, one entrance toward the north and one entrance toward the south; and the width of the open space was five cubits all around.

The building on the west

¹² The building that was facing the separate place on the west side was seventy cubits wide; the wall of the building was five cubits thick all around, and its length was ninety cubits. ¹³ Then he measured the house, a hundred cubits long; and the separate place with the building and its walls, a hundred cubits long. ¹⁴ And the width of the front of the house and of the separate place toward the east was a hundred cubits.

¹⁵ He measured the length of the building facing the separate place at its rear, with its galleries on this side and on that side, a hundred cubits; and the inner temple and the porches of the court, ¹⁶ the thresholds, the latticed windows and the galleries around the three of them, opposite the threshold, were paneled with wood all around, from the floor up to the windows; and the windows were covered, ¹⁷ up to the space above the entrance, even to the inner house, and outside, and on all the wall all around, inside and outside, by measure. ¹⁸ It was carved with cherubim and palm trees, a palm tree between cherub and cherub; and each cherub had two faces: ¹⁹ the face of a man toward the palm tree on this side, and the face of a young lion toward the palm tree on that side. It was carved on the whole house all around. ²⁰ From the floor to above the entrance, cherubim and palm trees were carved, and so was the wall of the temple.

²¹ The doorposts of the temple were square; and as for the front of the holy place, its appearance was like the appearance of the other. ²² The altar was of wood, three cubits high and two cubits long; its corners, its length and its walls were of wood. And he said to me, "This is the table that is before Yahweh."

²³ And there were two doors for the temple and for the holy place. ²⁴ Each door had two leaves, two turning leaves: two leaves for the one door and two leaves for the other. ²⁵ And on them, on the doors of the temple, were carved cherubim and palm trees, like those carved on the walls; and there was a canopy of wood on the front of the porch outside. ²⁶ And there were latticed windows and palm trees on this side and on that side, on the sides of the porch; so also the side chambers of the house and the canopies.

Notes

• 41:1 "The temple" is hekhal, here the main hall of the house, as in 1 Kings 6:17; it measures forty by twenty cubits (verse 2), the same as the hall of Solomon's temple. "The width of the tent" is how the Hebrew reads; some take it as a reminder of the tabernacle, the tent of meeting, while others think the words came into the text by error, and the Greek reads differently.
• 41:4 Up to now Ezekiel has walked with his guide, but here "he went inside" alone (verse 3): Ezekiel, a priest but not the high priest, seems not to enter the Most Holy Place, and many see in this the same reverence the Torah required (Leviticus 16:2). The room is twenty cubits by twenty, the size of the inner sanctuary of Solomon's temple (1 Kings 6:20). The text mentions no ark and no cherubim within it.
• 41:7 The details of these side chambers are hard to follow, and translations differ. As in Solomon's temple, the wall of the house seems to have been stepped back at each story, so that the beams rested on ledges instead of being set into the wall, and each higher story was a little wider (1 Kings 6:6); "went around" may refer to a winding stair like the one in 1 Kings 6:8.
• 41:12 "The separate place" is gizrah, from a verb meaning "to cut off": an area set apart behind the house, on the west. The text does not say what the large building beyond it was for, and Ezekiel gives it no name; many think it was for storage or service. With the house, the separate place and this building, the whole forms a square of a hundred cubits each way (verses 13-14).
• 41:18 The walls bear the same carvings as Solomon's temple, cherubim and palm trees (1 Kings 6:29), and many hear in them an echo of Eden guarded by cherubim (Genesis 3:24). The cherubim of Ezekiel's first visions each had four faces (1:10; 10:14); here each carved cherub shows two, a man's face toward one palm tree and a young lion's face toward the other, perhaps because a carving on a flat wall shows only two sides.
• 41:22 The only furnishing Ezekiel describes inside the house is this wooden altar, which the guide calls "the table that is before Yahweh." Some see in it the table of the bread of the Presence (Exodus 25:23-30), others the altar of incense (Exodus 30:1-3), which also stood before the Most Holy Place. Later the priests are to come near to Yahweh's table (44:16), and Malachi also speaks of Yahweh's altar as His table (Malachi 1:7, 12).

Ezekiel 40 · Ezekiel 42

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