Ezekiel 42: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

A guide leads Ezekiel out to the outer court and shows him the blocks of rooms on the north and south sides of the temple area, giving their size, their three stories, their walkways, and their doors. The guide explains that these are holy rooms where the priests eat the most holy offerings and store them, and that the priests must change out of their serving clothes before going back out to the people. He then measures the whole area around the temple, five hundred by five hundred on each of the four sides, marked off by a wall separating the holy area from the common ground.

Claim by Claim

1. 42:1
   • The man brought the prophet out into the outer court by the way toward the north.
   • He brought the prophet to the chamber that was opposite the separate space.
   • That chamber was also opposite the building, toward the north.
2. 42:2
   • The north door faced a length of a hundred cubits.
   • The breadth was fifty cubits.
3. 42:3
   • The chambers stood opposite the twenty cubits that belonged to the inner court.
   • The chambers stood opposite the pavement that belonged to the outer court.
   • Gallery faced gallery in three stories.
4. 42:4
   • In front of the chambers was a walkway ten cubits wide, running inward.
   • The walkway was a way of one cubit.
   • The doors of the chambers faced north.
5. 42:5
   • The upper chambers were shorter than the others.
   • The galleries took away space from the upper chambers.
   • The galleries took space from the lower and middle chambers of the building.
6. 42:6
   • The chambers were in three stories.
   • The chambers had no pillars like the pillars of the courts.
   • Because of this the upper chambers were narrowed back from the lower and the middle, measured from the ground.
7. 42:7
   • There was an outer wall alongside the chambers, running toward the outer court, in front of the chambers.
   • The length of that wall was fifty cubits.
8. 42:8
   • The length of the chambers on the outer court was fifty cubits.
   • In front of the temple the length was a hundred cubits.
9. 42:9
   • Beneath these chambers was the entry on the east side.
   • That entry was used by one going into the chambers from the outer court.
10. 42:10
    • Chambers stood in the thickness of the wall of the court toward the east.
    • Those chambers were opposite the separate space.
    • Those chambers were opposite the building.
11. 42:11
    • There was a way in front of these chambers.
    • These chambers looked like the chambers that were toward the north.
    • They were the same length as those chambers.
    • They were the same breadth as those chambers.
    • All their exits were according to the same arrangements.
    • All their exits were according to the same doorways.
12. 42:12
    • Corresponding to the doors of the chambers toward the south there was a door at the head of the way.
    • That way ran directly in front of the wall toward the east.
    • That way was the entrance by which one goes into the chambers.
13. 42:13
    • The man spoke to the prophet.
    • He said the north chambers and the south chambers are before the separate space.
    • He said these are holy chambers.
    • He said the priests who approach the LORD shall eat the most holy things there.
    • He said they shall lay the most holy things there.
    • He said they shall lay the grain offering there.
    • He said they shall lay the sin offering there.
    • He said they shall lay the guilt offering there.
    • He said the place is holy.
14. 42:14
    • When the priests enter, they shall not go out from the holy place into the outer court.
    • They shall lay there the garments in which they minister.
    • Those garments are holy.
    • They shall put on other garments.
    • Then they shall approach the area that belongs to the people.
15. 42:15
    • The man finished measuring the inner house.
    • He brought the prophet out by the gate that faces east.
    • He measured the area all around.
16. 42:16
    • He measured the east side with the measuring reed.
    • The east side was five hundred reeds by the measuring reed, measured all around.
17. 42:17
    • He measured the north side.
    • The north side was five hundred reeds by the measuring reed, measured all around.
18. 42:18
    • He measured the south side.
    • The south side was five hundred reeds by the measuring reed.
19. 42:19
    • He turned around to the west side.
    • He measured five hundred reeds with the measuring reed.
20. 42:20
    • He measured the area on its four sides.
    • It had a wall all around it.
    • The wall was five hundred long.
    • The wall was five hundred broad.
    • The wall served to separate the holy from the common.

Words Worth Explaining

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

42:1

The chapter continues a single long vision that runs from chapter 40 to chapter 48: a guide, described only as "the man," walks Ezekiel through a temple complex and measures it piece by piece. The complex is laid out as two nested courtyards, an outer court open to worshipers, and an inner court around the temple building itself, where the priests served. "The open space beside the temple" translates a Hebrew word (gizrah) for a restricted yard separating the temple building from the buildings behind and beside it; its exact extent is not certain.

42:2

A cubit was the distance from elbow to fingertip, roughly eighteen inches or forty-five centimetres. Ezekiel measures with a longer unit, a cubit plus a handbreadth, about twenty-one inches or fifty-three centimetres (40:5). A hundred cubits is therefore something like 175 feet or 53 meters, and fifty cubits about half that.

42:3

"Gallery" renders a Hebrew word whose meaning is uncertain; it is usually taken as an open balcony or walkway running along the front of each story, or possibly a terrace formed where each floor is set back from the one below. The twenty cubits and the paved area are landmarks in the courtyards already described in chapter 40.

42:4

The Hebrew here reads "a way of one cubit," a passage barely eighteen inches wide, which is hard to picture; the ancient Greek and Syriac versions read "a hundred cubits," making the walkway run the full length of the block. The rendering keeps the Hebrew.

42:6

The point is structural: without pillars to carry the upper floors out over the lower ones, each story had to sit back on the walls beneath it, so the top floor covered less ground than the ones below.

42:10

The Hebrew text says "toward the east" here, but the description that follows (and verse 12) concerns the south side, and most translations read "south." The rendering leaves the direction open.

42:13

The priests were the men, drawn from one family line, authorised to serve at the altar on behalf of everyone else. "Most holy" offerings were the portions of certain sacrifices assigned to the priests as food; the rules required them to be eaten inside the sacred precinct rather than taken home. The grain offering (the King James "meat offering", in 1611 "meat" meant food of any kind) was flour and oil; the sin offering and the guilt offering were sacrifices made to put right ritual defilement and specific wrongs, and their meat went to the priests.

42:14

Priests wore special clothing while serving. The concern here is that holiness attached to those garments could be transmitted by contact to ordinary people and ordinary things, so the clothes had to be left behind before the priest re-entered the public court.

42:15

"The inside of the temple area" means the whole walled precinct measured up to this point, not the interior of the temple building alone. From here the guide steps outside and measures the perimeter.

42:16

The measuring rod is defined in 40:5 as six long cubits, about ten and a half feet or a little over three meters. The Hebrew here says five hundred rods on each side, which would make the precinct roughly a mile square, far larger than the courts just described. Many ancient copies and translations read five hundred cubits instead, about a thousand feet or 300 meters, which fits the measurements given earlier. The rendering keeps "rods"; the discrepancy is a genuine problem in the text.

42:20

"Profane" in the King James does not mean corrupt or blasphemous. It means ordinary, common, everyday, the opposite of set apart. The wall marks where the reserved ground ends and normal ground begins.