Add parallel Print Page Options

Temple compound

Now there was an outer wall that went all the way around the temple compound. The measuring rod in the man’s hand was ten and a half feet[a] (based on a standard eighteen inches[b] plus three inches[c]). When he measured the wall’s height and width it was ten and a half feet high and ten and a half feet wide. He entered the gate facing east. He went up its steps, and he measured the plaza[d] at the gate. It was ten and a half feet wide: the plaza was ten and a half feet wide. The rooms were ten and a half feet long and ten and a half feet wide, with a space of seven and a half feet between them. The plaza next to the porch at the gate opposite the temple was ten and a half feet. He measured the porch of the gate opposite the temple: it was ten and a half feet. Then he measured the porch of the gate: it was twelve feet,[e] and its arches were three feet. The porch of the gate was opposite the temple. 10 Inside the east gate, there were three rooms on each side. Each was the same size, and the arches on each side were the same size also. 11 Then he measured the width of the gate opening, which was fifteen feet, and the gate’s length, which was nineteen and a half feet. 12 A border running along the front of the rooms on each side was eighteen inches wide, and each of the rooms was nine feet square. 13 He measured the gate through the room openings that faced each other. From the outer ceiling edge of one room to the outer ceiling edge of the other, the gate was thirty-seven and a half feet wide. 14 Next he made out the perimeter of the hallway, defined by the arches inside the gate: it was ninety feet. 15 It was seventy-five feet from the front of the outer gate to the front of the inner porch of the gate. 16 Inside the gate, all of the rooms and their arches had closed windows; there were also niches inside the porch all the way around. The arches were decorated with palm trees.

Read full chapter

Footnotes

  1. Ezekiel 40:5 Heb shesh ammoth ba'ammah traditionally six long cubits, which is defined as six times a standard ammah of eighteen inches plus a topha (traditionally handbreadth) of three inches. So the measuring rod has six segments of twenty-one inches each, which equals ten and a half feet. It is unclear whether the measurements with the rod continue past 40:8, when standard ammah appear, though the longer ammah do continue briefly in 43:13-17 for the altar.
  2. Ezekiel 40:5 Or a standard cubit
  3. Ezekiel 40:5 Or a handbreadth
  4. Ezekiel 40:6 Or threshold; Heb architectural and decorative terminology in Ezek 40–48 is often uncertain.
  5. Ezekiel 40:9 Or eight cubits

Bible Gateway Recommends