² Go to the house of the Rechabites, and speak with them, and bring them to the house of the Lord, into one of the chambers; then offer them wine to drink.^(A)

⁵⁵ The families also of the scribes that lived at Jabez: the Tirathites, the Shimeathites, and the Sucathites. These are the Kenites who came from Hammath, father of the house of Rechab.^(A)

²⁶ for the four chief gatekeepers, who were Levites, were in charge of the chambers and the treasures of the house of God.

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.

⁴ Amid the chambers was an interior passage, ten cubits wide and one hundred cubits deep,^[a] and its^[b] entrances were on the north.^{(A) 5} Now the upper chambers were narrower, for the galleries^[c] 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^[d] court; for this reason the upper chambers were set back from the ground more than the lower and the middle ones.^{(B) 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.^{(C) 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.^{(D) 10} The entrance was aligned with the start of the wall^[e] toward the court.

On the south^[f] 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^[g] 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.^[h]

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.^(E)

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. 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) 10} and the chambers of the court was a width of twenty cubits all around the temple on every side.^{(E) 11} The side chambers opened onto the area left free, one door toward the north and another door toward the south, and the width of the part that was left free was five cubits all around.^(F)

¹⁶ The recesses and their posts had windows, with shutters^[a] on the inside of the gateway all around, and the vestibules also had windows on the inside all around, and on the posts were palm trees.^(A)

⁷ recesses, and each recess was one reed wide and one reed deep, and the space between the recesses, five cubits, and the threshold of the gate by the vestibule of the gate at the inner end was one reed deep.^{(A) 8} Then he measured the inner vestibule of the gateway, one reed. ⁹ Then he measured the vestibule of the gateway, eight cubits, and its posts, two cubits, and the vestibule of the gate was at the inner end. ¹⁰ There were three recesses on either side of the east gate; the three were of the same size, and the posts on either side were of the same size.^{(B) 11} Then he measured the width of the opening of the gateway, ten cubits, and the width of the gateway, thirteen cubits. ¹² There was a barrier before the recesses, one cubit on either side, and each recess was six cubits square. ¹³ Then he measured the gate from the back^[a] of the one recess to the back^[b] of the other, a width of twenty-five cubits from wall to wall.^[c]

⁸ We have obeyed the charge of our ancestor Jonadab son of Rechab in all that he commanded us, to drink no wine all our days, ourselves, our wives, our sons, or our daughters,^(A)