1In the twenty-fifth year of our exile, at the beginning of the year on the tenth of the month in the fourteenth year after the city was struck, on that very day, the hand of the LORD was upon me, and He brought me there. 2In divine vision He brought me to the land of Israel and set me down on a very high mountain, and upon it was like the shape of a city on the south. 3And He brought me there, and, look, a man, his appearance like the appearance of bronze, and a linen tassel in his hand, and a measuring rod, and he was standing in the gate. 4And the man spoke to me: “Man, see with your eyes and with your ears hear and pay mind to all that I show you, for in order that it should be shown you have you been brought here. Tell all that you see to the house of Israel.” 5And, look, there was a wall outside the house all around, and in the man’s hand a measuring rod six cubits and a handsbreadth in length, and he measured the depth of the building’s wall to be one rod and the height one rod. 6And he entered that gate facing toward the east and went up its steps and measured the threshold of the gate to be one rod in depth and the inner threshold one rod in depth. 7And each recess was one rod high and one rod deep, and there were five cubits between the recesses, and the threshold of the gate alongside the gate’s hall from within was one rod. 8And he measured the gate’s hall from within to be one rod. 9And he measured the gate’s hall to be eight cubits and its pillars two cubits, and the gate’s hall was within. 10And the recesses of the gate facing east were three on each side, a single measure for the three of them and a single measure for the pillars on each side. 11And he measured the depth of the gate entrance to be ten cubits. The height of the gate was thirteen cubits. 12And there was a partition in front of the recesses of one cubit, one cubit the partition on each side, and the recess was six cubits on each side. 13And he measured the gate from the ceiling of the recess to the ceiling of the opposite recess, the depth was twenty-five cubits, entrance facing entrance. 14And he measured the columns to be sixty cubits, and the column of the gate’s court all around. 15And in front of the gate was the entranceway, in front of the inner wall of the gate, fifty cubits. 16And the recesses had latticed windows, and toward their pillars inside the gate all around, and so it was for the halls, windows all around inside, and on each pillar palm designs. 17And he brought me to the water court, and look, there were chambers and a pavement fashioned for the court all around, thirty chambers for the pavement. 18And the pavement was up to the side of the gates and opposite the width of the gates was the lower pavement. 19And he measured the depth from in front of the lower gate in front of the inner court from outside to be a hundred cubits, the east and the north sides. 20And the gate that was facing north of the outer court, he measured its height and its depth. 21And its recess was three cubits on each side, and its pillars and its hall were as the measure of the first gate, fifty cubits long and twenty-five cubits wide. 22And its windows and its pillars and its palm designs as the measure of the gate facing out, and on seven steps they would go up to it with its pillars before them. 23And the inner court had a gate opposite the gate to the north and to the east, and he measured from gate to gate to be a hundred cubits. 24And he led me to the south side, and, look, there was a gate on the south side. And he measured its pillars and its halls according to these measures. 25And there were windows in its halls all around like these windows, fifty cubits long and twenty-five cubits wide. 26And there were seven steps going up to it, and its hall was in front of them, and its pillars had palm designs on each side. 27And the inner court had a gate on the south side. And he measured from gate to gate on the south side to be a hundred cubits. 28And he brought me to the inner court through the south gate, and he measured the south gate to be as these measures. 29And its recesses and its pillars and its halls were as these measurements, and its halls had windows all around, fifty cubits long and twenty-five cubits wide. 30And the halls all around were twenty-five cubits long and five cubits wide. 31And the outer court had a hall with its pillars, and eight steps going up. 32And he brought me to the inner court on the east side and measured the gate to be as these measurements. 33And its recesses and its pillars and its halls were as these measurements, and its halls had windows all around, fifty cubits long and twenty-five cubits wide. 34And the outer court had halls and palm designs on its pillars on each side and eight steps going up. 35And he brought me to the north gate and measured as these measures. 36Its recesses, its pillars and its halls and the windows it had all around, fifty cubits long and twenty-five cubits wide. 37And there were pillars for the outer court and palm designs on the pillars on both sides and eight steps going up. 38And there was a chamber with its entrance in the hall of the gates. There they would wash the sacrifice. 39And in the hall of the gate were two tables on each side on which to slaughter the burnt offering and the offense offering and the guilt offering. 40And on the flank outside the hall of the gate’s entrance to the north were two tables and on the other flank of the hall of the gate two tables. 41Four tables there were on each side of the flank of the gate—eight tables on which they did the slaughtering. 42And four tables of hewn stone for the burnt offering, one and a half cubits long and one and a half cubits wide and one cubit high. Upon them they would set the utensils with which they slaughtered the burnt offering and the sacrifice. 43And the spits, one handsbreadth, were set in the house all around, and upon the tables was the flesh of the sacrifice. 44And outside the inner gate were the chambers of the nobles, in the inner court that was by the flank of the northern gate, and they faced to the south, one by the flank of the eastern gate, facing to the north. 45And he spoke to me: “This is the chamber that faces to the south for the priests who keep the watch of the house. 46And the chamber that faces to the north is for the priests who keep the watch of the altar. They are the sons of Zadok from the sons of Levi who drew near to the LORD to serve Him.” 47And he measured the court to be a hundred cubits in length and a hundred cubits in width, square, and the altar was in front of the house. 48And he brought me to the hall of the house and measured the hall to be five hundred cubits on each side, and the width of the gate was three cubits on each side. 49The hall was twenty cubits long and eleven cubits wide, and one went up to it by steps. And there were columns by the pillars on each side.
CHAPTER 40 NOTES
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1. the twenty-fifth year of our exile. This locates the present prophecy in 572 B.C.E., as the text goes on to note, fourteen years after the destruction of the Jerusalem temple.
the hand of the LORD was upon me, and He brought me there. This formulation is in line with others in Ezekiel in which the visionary experience is registered as a virtual physical transportation from one place to another. But the term “divine vision” indicates this is a mental experience.
2. like the shape of a city. As in Ezekiel’s visions from chapter 1 onward, what he sees is represented not as the thing itself but as a semblance to or analogue of the real thing.
3. a man. As the next phrase makes clear, “the man” is in fact a divine emissary. Daniel will pick up this usage from Ezekiel.
5. there was a wall outside the house. Throughout, “the house” is the house of God—that is, the Temple. To the modern reader, it is certainly odd that Ezekiel’s book should end with nine chapters devoted to an intricate account of the architecture of the Temple and the procedures of the sacrificial cult. There is nothing quite like this in any of the other Prophets. There is no reason, however, to question the status of these chapters as an authentic production by Ezekiel. One should remember that he was a Jerusalem priest deported from the city where the Temple stood in the early, partial exile of 597 B.C.E. Now, a quarter of a century later, and fourteen years after the Temple was demolished in the conquest of Jerusalem by the Babylonians, he undertakes a kind of imaginative reconstruction of the Temple, and then of the cult, painstakingly laying out its sundry structures, gate by gate, hall by hall, recess to recess. For him, this amounts to a prophecy of consolation. All this, it must be said, is rather bewildering to follow, although various commentators have sought to provide charts and floor plans based on Ezekiel’s notations. There is, to begin with, a problem of architectural terms, many of which are uncertain in meaning. (The same is true of the account of Solomon’s temple in Kings.) At least a few terms actually fluctuate in meaning. The two Hebrew words that usually mean “width” and “length” at first appear to indicate “depth” and “height,” but later in the chapter they revert to their ordinary meaning. But even if we could be certain of all the architectural terms, the lineaments of the Temple are hard to make out. This commentary therefore will not attempt to elucidate the picture of the Temple. It should also be noted that Ezekiel’s description of the Temple does not altogether jibe with the one in the Book of Kings, nor does his account of the cult entirely match other biblical formulations. One must assume that he either was writing from imperfect memory of the Jerusalem scene he had left two and a half decades earlier or was projecting what he conceived as an ideal image of the Temple and the worship within it.
he measured the depth. The device of having all the measurements done by the divine emissary is a way of confirming their unvarying accuracy.
38. There they would wash the sacrifice. For Ezekiel the priest, the Temple is vital not only as a splendid architectural structure but because within it animal sacrifices can be offered daily—sacrifices that had been totally interrupted for the past fourteen years.
46. who drew near to the LORD. The verb here is used in its technical cultic sense: one who “draws near” is the priest who is authorized to enter into the sacred space of the Temple.