Ezekiel 41
A scattering of Temple measurements
Inside the Temple
1Then the guide led me into the biggest room in the Temple building. The doorway to that room was about 10 1/2 feet … 10½ feet [1] deep, as measured by the vertical door jambs. 2The doorway itself was 17 ½ feet wide. Walls on each side of the door, left and right, each measured about 9 feet. Then he measured the big room itself, 70 by 35 feet.3Next, he went to the back room. The wall between the two rooms was 3 ½ feet thick, measured by the door jambs. The doorway was 10 feet wide. The walls left and right of the doorway extended another 12 feet on each side. 4The back room measured 35 feet on all sides. He told me, “This is the holiest place.”
Measuring the outside wall
5Then we went outside, and he measured the outside walls: 10.5 feet thick. Beyond the walls there were small storage rooms seven feet wide. 6Those side rooms—30 of them—rose to three stories. Builders put a 7-foot gap between the side rooms and the Temple because they didn’t want the side rooms to share a wall with the Temple.7Priests went into the upper rooms of the side buildings through a winding staircase. [2] There was more storage space in the top rooms because the walls were thicker at the bottom.
8The Temple and side rooms sat on a stone foundation 10 ½ feet high. 9The outer wall of the side rooms was about 9 feet thick. There was a gap between those rooms and the Temple.
10There were other rooms 35 feet away. [3] With the side rooms, there were rooms on all four sides of the Temple. 11The northern and southern side rooms each had a door that opened onto a raised and square patio about nine feet on each side.
Behind the Temple
12There was another building, even larger than the Temple. It was behind the Temple, on the western side of the Temple complex. Measured on the inside, it was about 122 feet wide and 157 feet long. [4] The walls were about 9 feet thick.13The man went back to the Temple and measured its outside length: 175 feet long. A restricted courtyard behind the Temple added 175 feet. This included the courtyard walls. 14The front of the Temple with the restricted area also measured 175 feet wide, north to south.
15He went back to the large building behind the Temple and measured its footprint, walls included: 175 feet wide. [5] 16The front porch of the Temple and both inside rooms were covered with wood paneling, from the windows to the floor. 17There was paneling above the doorway on both sides of the back room, as well.
Artwork inside the Temple
18Decorations were engraved into the walls: palm trees along with cherubim that wore two faces. 19One face looked human. The other looked like a lion. Each face looked toward a palm tree. That was the pattern on the walls. 20These figures were carved into the wooden paneling throughout the Temple, from the floor to the top of the paneling, which extended above the doorways. 21Inside the Temple, by the entrance, there were square columns supporting the roof.22There was a big table that looked like an altar in the back of the big room, near the entrance into the smaller room. It was over five feet high and 3 ½ feet wide. Its legs, sides, and corners were all made of wood. The guide said, “This is the LORD’s table.” [6] 23Double doors opened into the big room and another set of double doors opened into the smaller room in the back, the holiest place. 24Each doorway had two doors swinging on its own hinges.
25The same pattern of cherubim and palm that covered the walls also covered the doors into the big room. A wooden roof covered the vestibule, the entryway room into the Temple. 26Windows on two sides of that room were framed in decorations of palm trees carved into the wood.
Footnotes
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Cubits In/ft Cm/m 1 21″ 53 cm 2 3′6″ 107 cm 3 5′3″ 160 cm 4 7′0″ 2.13 m 5 8′9″ 2.67 m 6 10′6″ 3.20 m 7 12′3″ 3.73 m 8 14′0″ 4.27 m 9 15′9″ 4.80 m 10 17′6″ 5.33 m 20 35′0″ 10.67 m 30 52′6″ 16.00 m 40 70′0″ 21.34 m 50 87′6″ 26.67 m 60 105′0″ 32.00 m 70 122′6″ 37.34 m 80 140′0″ 42.67 m 90 157′6″ 48.00 m 100 175′0″ 53.34 m
Scholars say this is a hard verse to understand, which is why Bibles describe the passageway differently. TCEB draws from the description in 1 Kings 6:8, presuming Ezekiel had this description of Solomon’s Temple in mind when writing.
Twenty cubits, or 10 meters. This is confusing. The Hebrew makes it sound like these rooms surrounded the Temple, with this size of a gap. But earlier, Ezekiel said the side rooms were only about 9 feet away, which was 5 cubits or 2 ½ meters.
By comparison, the inside of the Temple measured only 105 feet long and 35 feet wide (32 by 10.7 meters). Some of the temples in Egypt had storage facilities four times the size of the temples. There, the king kept his treasures—like very large safe deposit boxes. The Temple had a lot of treasures too, occasionally stolen by invaders.
Translations from here through the rest of the chapter are guesswork, to a big extent. Compare Bible translations to see how much they vary. The original Hebrew text, scholars say, doesn’t make much sense. And scholars debate the meaning of some of the words.
More literally, it’s “the table of the LORD’s presence” or “This table is in front of God.” It’s a reminder that the Temple Solomon built had a table in the big room. It was for the “sacred Bread in God’s Presence” (Exodus 35:13). Priests were supposed to keep bread on this table every day (Exodus 25:30).
Discussion Questions
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