Ezequiel 42:1

XLII.

This chapter describes what is not only new in this vision, but also unknown in either the former or the later Temple. Ezequiel 42:1 are occupied with the account of certain chambers for the priests adjoining the inner court, but actually within the area of the outer. From Ezequiel 42:14 it is plain that these chambers, although thus situated in the outer court, were considered for ecclesiastical purposes as belonging to the inner. Ezequiel 42:15 describe a very large area enclosing the Temple and its courts as an additional safeguard to its sanctity.

(1) Utter court. — Outer court (see Note on 40:31). The “into” of the next clause should be “unto”; so also in Ezequiel 46:19.

Before the building. — The preposition is the same as that translated just before, and also twice in Ezequiel 42:3, “over against.” The length of this chamber, or series of chambers, was 100 cubits (Ezequiel 42:2), and as it appears from Ezequiel 46:19 that it did not reach to the western wall, it must have extended the whole remaining length of the building to the west of the separate place, across the separate place itself, and probably also across the chambers at the west end of the Temple (see Plan II., H, H [Ezequiel 40:44]). The chamber on the north is particularly described in Ezequiel 42:1, and in Ezequiel 42:10 mention is made more briefly of a corresponding one on the south.