THE SANCTUARY (EZEKIEL 41:1). We have now reached the central focus of the temple complex, the sanctuary itself. This was divided into three parts, the porch or vestibule ('ulam), the holy place (the nave - hekal - from the Sumerian e.gal ‘great house') and the holiest of all (the holy of holies) ... [ Continue Reading ]
‘And he brought me to the temple and measured the posts, six cubits broad on the one side and six cubits broad on the other side, which was the breadth of the tent. And the breadth of the entrance was ten cubits, and the sides (shoulders) of the entrance were five cubits on the one side and five cub... [ Continue Reading ]
‘Then he went inward and measured each post of the entrance, two cubits, and the entrance six cubits, and the breadth of the entrance seven cubits. And he measured its length, twenty cubits, and its breadth, twenty cubits, before the temple. And he said to me, “This is the most holy place”.' Notice... [ Continue Reading ]
‘Then he measured the wall of the house, six cubits. And the breadth of every side-chamber, four cubits, around the house on every side. And the side-chambers were in three storeys, one over another, and thirty in order. And they went into the wall which belonged to the house for the side-chambers r... [ Continue Reading ]
THE SIDE CHAMBERS (EZEKIEL 41:5). It is with a sense of anticlimax that we move to examine more detail of the sanctuary building. Here are described the side chambers (see 1 Kings 6:5) possibly intended for different purposes such as the storage of temple equipment and furniture, for tithes and offe... [ Continue Reading ]
‘And the side-chambers were broader as they went round the house level by level. For the surrounds of the house went up level by level around the house. So the breadth of the house continued upwards, and one went from the lowest level to the highest level via the middle level. The rooms on the uppe... [ Continue Reading ]
‘I saw also that the house had a raised platform round about. The foundations of the side-chambers were a full reed of six long cubits.' The side rooms stood on the same platform as the rest of the temple, which was six long cubits above the level of the surrounding courtyard. The six probably repr... [ Continue Reading ]
‘The thickness of the wall which was on the outside, which was for the side-chambers, was five cubits, and what was left was the place for the side-chambers which belonged to the house.' The outer wall supporting the chambers was five cubits thick. ‘What was left' probably refers to a pavement roun... [ Continue Reading ]
‘And between the chambers was a breadth of twenty cubits round about the house on every side.' The chambers belonging to the sanctuary proper, which have just been described, were separated from any other buildings by a ‘temple yard' measuring twenty cubits all the way round on the north, south and... [ Continue Reading ]
‘And the doors of the side-chambers faced that which was left, one door towards the north and one door towards the south. And the breadth of the place that was left was five cubits round about.' The external doors leading to the side-chambers were accessed from the pavement (‘that which was left')... [ Continue Reading ]
‘And the building that was before the separate place at the side towards the west was seventy cubits broad, and the wall of the building was five cubits thick round about, and its length was ninety cubits.' To the rear of the sanctuary, instead of chambers there was a large building, separated from... [ Continue Reading ]
THE FULL MEASUREMENT OF THE SANCTUARY (EZEKIEL 41:13 A). ‘So he measured the house, a hundred cubits long, and the separate place and the building, with its walls, one hundred cubits long. Also the breadth of the house, and of the separate place towards the east, a hundred cubits. And he measured t... [ Continue Reading ]
-17 ‘And the inner temple and the vestibules of the court, the thresholds, and the narrowing windows, and the galleries round about on their three storeys over against the threshold, were panelled with wood round about, even from the ground up to the windows, (now the windows were covered), to the s... [ Continue Reading ]
THE TEMPLE DECORATIONS AND FURNISHINGS (EZEKIEL 41:15). The walls of the sanctuary were all panelled with wood and decorated with palm trees and cherubim, the latter having two faces, representing both man and beast. Thus the whole of creation was celebrated in the decorations.... [ Continue Reading ]
‘And it was decorated with cherubim and palm trees, and a palm tree was between cherub and cherub, and every cherub had two faces, so that there was the face of a man towards the palm tree on one side, and the face of a young lion towards the palm tree on the other side. Thus was it decorated throug... [ Continue Reading ]
‘As for the temple, the door posts were squared. And as for the face of the sanctuary the appearance was as the appearance (i.e. as described above).' The description is finalised by stressing that the door posts were squared, an indication of perfection (they were foursquare), and that the whole o... [ Continue Reading ]
‘The altar was of wood. It was three cubits high and its length was two cubits. And its corners, and its length, and its walls were of wood. And he said to me, “This is the table which is before Yahweh”.' Once again we have the heavenly visitant speaking with awe as he describes something very speci... [ Continue Reading ]
‘And the temple and the sanctuary had two doors, and the doors had two leaves each, two turning leaves, two leaves for the one door and two leaves for the other.' There were two doors in both the entrance to the holy place and the entrance to the holy of holies, and each of those doors divided in t... [ Continue Reading ]
‘And there was decorated on them, on the doors of the temple, cherubim and palm trees, in a similar way they were decorated on the walls, and there were thick beams of wood (or ‘a wooden canopy') on the face of the vestibule outside, and there were narrowing windows and palm trees on the one side an... [ Continue Reading ]