Ezekiel 41: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

The guide who has been showing Ezekiel the temple now measures the main building itself: the outer hall, the inner room he calls the Most Holy Place, the temple wall, and the three levels of side rooms built around it. He then measures the raised base, the open space around the building, the separate yard, and the building on the west side. The chapter ends by describing the wood paneling carved with cherubim and palm trees, the wooden altar the man calls the table before the LORD, and the double doors of the hall and the inner room.

Claim by Claim

1. 41:1
   • A man brought the prophet into the main hall of the temple.
   • The man measured the side pillars.
   • The side pillars were six cubits wide on one side.
   • The side pillars were six cubits wide on the other side.
   • That measurement was the width of the tent.
2. 41:2
   • The width of the entrance was ten cubits.
   • The sidewalls of the entrance were five cubits on one side.
   • The sidewalls of the entrance were five cubits on the other side.
   • The man measured the length of the hall at forty cubits.
   • The width of the hall was twenty cubits.
3. 41:3
   • The man went inside to the inner room.
   • He measured the pillar of the entrance at two cubits.
   • The entrance was six cubits.
   • The width of the entrance was seven cubits.
4. 41:4
   • The man measured the length at twenty cubits.
   • He measured the width at twenty cubits.
   • This room lay in front of the main hall.
   • The man said to the prophet that this was the most holy place.
5. 41:5
   • The man measured the wall of the house at six cubits.
   • The width of each side chamber was four cubits.
   • The side chambers ran all around the house on every side.
6. 41:6
   • The side chambers were arranged one above another.
   • There were three tiers of them, thirty times over.
   • The side chambers entered into the wall belonging to the house all around, so that they would be held in place.
   • The side chambers were not fastened into the wall of the house itself.
7. 41:7
   • The side chambers grew wider as they went higher.
   • The structure winding around the house went upward all around the house.
   • Therefore the width of the house increased as it went upward.
   • One went up from the lowest story to the highest by way of the middle story.
8. 41:8
   • The prophet saw a raised platform around the house.
   • The foundations of the side chambers measured a full reed.
   • The full reed was six cubits.
9. 41:9
   • The thickness of the outer wall of the side chambers was five cubits.
   • The space that was left open was the place of the side chambers belonging to the house.
10. 41:10
    • Between the chambers there was a width of twenty cubits.
    • This width ran all around the house on every side.
11. 41:11
    • The entrances of the side chambers opened toward the open space that was left.
    • One entrance faced north.
    • One entrance faced south.
    • The width of the open space that was left was five cubits all around.
12. 41:12
    • The building facing the separate place on the west side was seventy cubits wide.
    • The wall of that building was five cubits thick all around.
    • The length of that building was ninety cubits.
13. 41:13
    • The man measured the house at a hundred cubits long.
    • The separate place, the building, and its walls were a hundred cubits long.
14. 41:14
    • The width of the front of the house together with the separate place on the east was a hundred cubits.
15. 41:15
    • The man measured the length of the building facing the separate place behind it.
    • He measured its galleries on one side and on the other.
    • That length was a hundred cubits.
    • The measurement included the inner temple and the porches of the court.
16. 41:16
    • There were thresholds.
    • There were narrow, closed windows.
    • There were galleries all around on their three stories, opposite the threshold.
    • These were overlaid with wood all around.
    • The paneling ran from the ground up to the windows.
    • The windows were covered.
17. 41:17
    • The work extended to the space above the entrance.
    • It extended to the inner house and to the outside.
    • It extended over all the wall all around, inside and outside.
    • It was done by measure.
18. 41:18
    • The work was made with cherubim and palm trees.
    • A palm tree stood between each pair of cherubim.
    • Each cherub had two faces.
19. 41:19
    • The face of a man was turned toward the palm tree on one side.
    • The face of a young lion was turned toward the palm tree on the other side.
    • This was made throughout all the house all around.
20. 41:20
    • Cherubim and palm trees were made from the ground up to above the entrance.
    • They were also on the wall of the main hall.
21. 41:21
    • The doorposts of the main hall were square.
    • The front of the sanctuary had the same appearance as the other.
22. 41:22
    • There was an altar of wood.
    • The altar was three cubits high.
    • Its length was two cubits.
    • It had corners.
    • Its length and its walls were of wood.
    • The man said to the prophet that this was the table that is before the LORD.
23. 41:23
    • The main hall had two doors.
    • The sanctuary had two doors.
24. 41:24
    • Each door had two leaves.
    • The two leaves turned.
    • One door had two leaves.
    • The other door had two leaves.
25. 41:25
    • Cherubim and palm trees were made on the doors of the main hall.
    • They were made like those made on the walls.
    • There was a thick beam of wood on the front of the porch outside.
26. 41:26
    • There were narrow, closed windows on one side and on the other.
    • There were palm trees on one side and on the other.
    • These were on the sidewalls of the porch.
    • The side chambers of the house and the thick beams were there as well.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

41:1

"The man" is the guide with the appearance of bronze who has been measuring the temple since chapter 40; he carries a measuring line and a measuring rod. (A cubit was the distance from elbow to fingertip, roughly eighteen inches. The measurements in these chapters use the "long cubit," an ordinary cubit plus a handbreadth, about twenty and a half inches (see verse 8).) The temple building had three parts in a straight line: an entrance porch, a long "main hall" (the great room, sometimes called the nave or holy place), and beyond it a smaller square inner room. "The tent" is the tabernacle, the portable shrine Israel carried in the wilderness before there was a temple; the point is that the new building's proportions match the old one's.

41:2

Forty cubits by twenty is roughly seventy feet by thirty five feet, about the size of a tennis court.

41:3

The guide goes in alone. Ezekiel is not described as entering the innermost room, and the measuring inside it is reported to him rather than seen by him.

41:4

The "Most Holy Place" (literally "holy of holies") was the innermost, windowless room of the temple, kept empty of ordinary use and entered by the high priest only once a year. Twenty cubits square is about thirty-four feet each way.

41:5

The "side rooms" were small chambers built in tiers against the outside of the temple walls, used for storage of equipment, supplies and donated goods rather than for worship.

41:6

The point of the ledges is that no beam was ever driven into the temple wall. The side rooms leaned on stepped shelves cut into the outside of the wall instead, so the sanctuary wall was never pierced.

41:8

A measuring rod was a standard surveying tool. Ezekiel 40:5 gives its length as six long cubits, each an ordinary cubit plus a handbreadth, roughly ten and a half feet in modern terms. This verse repeats that definition.

41:10

These other chambers were the rooms built around the courtyard, described back in chapter 40.

41:12

The "separate yard" (Hebrew *gizrah*, from a word meaning "cut off") was a restricted open area behind the temple, walled off from the rest of the courtyard. Nothing in the text says what it was used for.

41:13

A hundred cubits is roughly 170 feet, or a little over fifty meters.

41:15

"Galleries" translates a Hebrew word whose meaning is uncertain; it may mean balconies, colonnades, or stepped recesses in the wall. Ancient translators disagreed about it, and the rendering here keeps the traditional guess.

41:16

"Narrow windows" renders a Hebrew phrase usually understood as window openings cut wider on the inside than the outside, so the frame slopes, letting in light while keeping the opening small. That the windows were "covered" may mean latticed or shuttered; the word is unclear.

41:18

Cherubim (the plural of cherub) were winged composite figures, part human and part animal, familiar across the ancient Near East as guardian creatures flanking thrones and doorways. They are not the plump infants of later European art. In Ezekiel's opening vision each had four faces; the carvings here have two. Palm trees were a standard decorative motif in Near Eastern temple and palace panelling, often alternating with such figures.

41:19

In chapters 1 and 10 Ezekiel described cherubim with four faces each. Here the carvings show only two, a human face and a lion's face, one turned each way toward the palm tree beside it, which is what you can actually show in flat relief carving on a wall.

41:21

Square doorposts means the frames were rectangular in section rather than tapered or stepped, which was the usual style in temple doorways.

41:22

Three cubits is about five feet high, two cubits about three and a half feet across. The guide calls the same object both an altar and a table; in the older temple a table stood in the main hall holding the loaves of bread set out before God, while altars were normally of stone or bronze and used for burning offerings. The text leaves the two descriptions side by side without explaining them.

41:24

Each door folded in the middle, like a shutter, so half of it could swing open at a time.

41:25

The "thick wooden covering" translates an obscure Hebrew word; it is variously taken to mean a canopy, an overhanging beam, or heavy planking across the porch front. The exact object is unknown.

41:26

"Narrow windows" again means the slanted frames of verse 16, wider inside than out.