⁵ Then he measured the wall of the temple, six cubits thick, and the width of the side chambers, four cubits, all around the temple.

³ Facing the twenty cubits that belonged to the inner court and facing the pavement that belonged to the outer court, the chambers rose^[a] gallery^[b] by gallery^[c] in three stories.^{(A) 4} Amid the chambers was an interior passage, ten cubits wide and one hundred cubits deep,^[d] and its^[e] entrances were on the north.^{(B) 5} Now the upper chambers were narrower, for the galleries^[f] took more away from them than from the lower and middle chambers in the building. ⁶ For they were in three stories, and they had no pillars like the pillars of the outer^[g] court; for this reason the upper chambers were set back from the ground more than the lower and the middle ones.^{(C) 7} There was a wall outside parallel to the chambers, toward the outer court, opposite the chambers, fifty cubits long. ⁸ For the chambers on the outer court were fifty cubits long, while those opposite the temple were one hundred cubits long.^{(D) 9} At the foot of these chambers ran a passage that one entered from the east in order to enter them from the terrace space outside.^{(E) 10} The entrance was aligned with the start of the wall^[h] toward the court.

On the south^[i] also, opposite the vacant area and opposite the building, there were chambers ¹¹ with a passage in front of them; they were similar to the chambers on the north, of the same length and width, with the same exits^[j] and arrangements and doors. ¹² So the entrances of the chambers to the south were entered through the entrance at the head of the corresponding passage, from the east, along the matching wall.^[k]

¹³ Then he said to me, “The north chambers and the south chambers opposite the vacant area are the holy chambers where the priests who approach the Lord shall eat the most holy offerings; there they shall deposit the most holy offerings—the grain offering, the purification offering, and the guilt offering—for the place is holy.^{(F) 14} When the priests enter the holy place, they shall not go out of it into the outer court without laying there the vestments in which they minister, for these are holy; they shall put on other garments before they go near to the area open to the people.”^(G)

⁶ The side chambers were in three stories, one over another, thirty in each story. There were offsets^[a] all around the wall of the temple to serve as supports for the side chambers so that they should not be supported by the wall of the temple.^{(A) 7} The passageway^[b] of the side chambers widened from story to story, for the structure was supplied with a stairway all around the temple. For this reason the structure became wider from story to story. One ascended from the bottom story to the uppermost story by way of the middle one.^{(B) 8} I saw also that the temple was on a raised platform all around; the foundations of the side chambers measured a full reed of six long cubits high.^{(C) 9} The thickness of the outer wall of the side chambers was five cubits, and the free space between the side chambers of the temple^(D)

⁵ He also built a structure against the wall of the house, running around the walls of the house, both the nave and the inner sanctuary, and he made side chambers all around.^{(A) 6} The lowest story^[a] was five cubits wide, the middle one was six cubits wide, and the third was seven cubits wide, for around the outside of the house he made offsets on the wall in order that the supporting beams should not be inserted into the walls of the house.