Ezekiel 42:20

‘He measured it on the four sides. It had a wall round about, the length five hundred and the breadth five hundred, to make a separation between that which was holy and that which was common.'

This is the grounds for arguing a further wall to enclose the area of separation. If we read ‘reeds' all through this must be so. Compare the ‘separate place' around the sanctuary. We must remember in these measurements that we are not talking about an earthly temple but a heavenly temple. Thus arguments about where it would be sited are irrelevant. The picture is one of unalloyed holiness which has to be preserved at all costs. The number five hundred also stresses the covenant nature of the temple area (5 x 10 x 10), five intensified.

But note that in Ezekiel 42:20 b the unit of measurement is not specifically mentioned (neither reeds nor cubits). Thus it may be that the note about the wall here is a finally added comment, referring to the wall of the temple, and ‘cubits' is to be read in. The idea would then be to draw attention to the parallel between the ‘500 reeds' of the separation area and the ‘500 cubits' of the wall, (cubits being understood from the previous measurements), with the stress on the separation of the holy from the common and the covenant significance of the numbers.

(Indeed it may be that a cryptic ‘500 x 500' would always be read as cubits automatically where no unit of measurement was stated, as today tradesmen might automatically understand ‘metres' (or ‘feet').)

However, LXX specifically reads ‘cubits' throughout (mostly understood) rather than ‘reeds' and this would then be the measurement of the outer wall around the temple area itself, which fits in with the measurements described earlier. But LXX does have a tendency to remove difficulties in the numbers by making alterations.