Ezekiel 41:8

I saw also the height of the house round about,.... Not of the temple itself, but of the chambers, and the three stories of them, which went round about it; and particularly the height of the highest

I saw also the height of the house round about: the foundations of the side chambers were a full reed of six great cubits.

Of the house; of the chambers, or the three stories of them; it is not the temple. The lowest chamber had properly a foundation laid on the earth, but the floor of the middle and highest story must be accounted here a foundation; so from the ground to the ceiling of the first room was six great cubits; from the first beams, joists, and boards to the second; six great cubits; and from the third floor to the roof of the chamber, a like number: to which if we add one cubit for thickness of each of the three roofs or floors, you have twenty-one cubits for height, ten yards and half high.

Ezekiel 41:8 I saw also the height of the house round about: the foundations of the side chambers [were] a full reed of six great cubits.Ver. 8. The foundations.] Plus rei quam ostentationis habebant, The good soul rather seeks to be good, than seems to be so. Oecolamp.

(8) I saw also the height of the house.—This does not mean the height of the house itself, which is nowhere stated. The words are, literally, I saw for the house a height (i.e., an elevation) round about, and the meaning of this is explained in what follows. The Temple, as has been already said (Ezekiel 40:49), was entered by a flight of steps leading up to the porch, and was therefore on a higher level than the court. We are now told that the side chambers had a foundation of six cubits. Whether this “foundation” of the Temple and the side chambers was built of masonry, or, as is more probable, was a sort of basement to contain cisterns and storage rooms, we are not told; but it probably extended, under the name of “the place that was left” (Ezekiel 41:9; Ezekiel 41:11), five cubits beyond the outer wall of the chambers, forming a platform from which they were entered. Six great cubits.—Literally, six cubits to the joint, or to the armpit, for the word has both significations. It is plain that a cubit of a different length, measured to the armpit, cannot be intended, both because no such cubit is known to have been in use at any time, and because Ezekiel in Ezekiel 40:5 has already fixed the length of the cubit he uses. The sense of joint is therefore to be taken, and this applied architecturally can only mean the point at which one part of the building joins another; here, the point where the superstructure meets the foundation, or, as we should say, “six cubits to the water-table.”

Ch. 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 the so and so, assuming that they are well known.

The foundations of the side chambers - Therefore the height of the side-chambers from the floor was six cubits there being three stories, which corresponds sufficiently with the twenty cubits which was the height of the temple.

5-11. Various details in this description of the side chambers (compare 1 Kings 6:5-10; 1 Kings 7:51) are uncertain, but Toy’s rendering makes plain the general meaning: “He measured the wall of the temple six cubits thick.