Ezekiel 41:5-11

Ezekiel 41:5-11. The side chambers or annexe to the house

The text in some places is confused, but the general meaning is clear. Round about the wall of the house on three sides (N., W. and S.) were built side-chambers in three stories, thirty chambers in each story, Fig. 2, D. The chamber on the ground floor was 4 cubits wide (N. to S.), but in the second story the width was greater than in the first, and in the third story greater than in the second. The reason of this greater wideness of the upper stories was that the wall of the house on which the chambers were built diminished in thickness as it ascended. This wall was 6 cubits thick at the base (Ezekiel 41:5), but it was let in at two points as it ascended. The same arrangement had place in Solomon's temple "on the outside he made rebatements in the wall of the house round about" (1 Kings 6:6). The effect of this decrease in the thickness of the wall (in Solomon's temple a cubit each time) was that the chambers in the second and third stories became so much broader. In consequence of this narrowing of the wall of the house at two points two ledges ran round the wall on three sides, and on these ledges the beams that supported the second and third stories of the side-chambers rested, without being let into the wall (Ezekiel 41:6). The wall of the side-chambers was thus on one side the wall of the house; on the other side they had a wall of their own, 5 cubits thick (Ezekiel 41:9). The whole structure, house and side chambers, was built upon a raised platform, 6 cubits higher than the level of the inner court (Ezekiel 41:8). The buildings, however (temple and side-chambers), did not quite cover the platform: a margin of 5 cubits ("that which was left," Ezekiel 41:9; Ezekiel 41:11) remained free outside the side-chambers, on two sides (N. and S.), Fig. 2, E; and from this free space the doors into the side-chambers opened, one on the N. and another on the S., Fig. 2, g(Ezekiel 41:11). Further, on the walls of the inner court, N. and S., were chambers for the priests, Fig. 3, GG´, and between the temple-platform and these cells ran a passage or court of 20 cubits ("the separate place," Ezekiel 41:12). This court ran round the house-platform on three sides (N. W. S.), Fig. 3, H. The way in which one story of the side-chambers communicated with another is described only generally (Ezekiel 41:7); in Solomon's temple the communication is supposed to have been by a spiral staircase, or more probably by a ladder and trap-doors. It is evident that the prophet reproduces in the main the arrangements of the temple, hence he refers to the several things, even when first mentioning them, as theso and so, assuming that they are well known.