Ezekiel 40:5 - Exposition

The enclosing wall . And behold a wall on the outside of the house round about. The "house"— הַבַּיִת with the article—was the temple as the dwelling-place of Jehovah; only not the temple proper, but the whole complex structure. The "wall" belonged to the outer court; that of the inner court being afterwards mentioned ( Ezekiel 42:7 ). In having a "wall round about" Jehovah's sanctuary resembled both Greek and Babylonian shrines (see Herod; 1.18; ' Records of the Past,' vol. 5.126), but differed from both the tabernacle, which had none, and from the Solomonic temple, whose "wall" formed no essential part of the sacred structure, but was more or less of arbitrary erection on the part of Solomon and later kings. Here, however, the wall constituted an integral portion of the whole; and was designed, like that in Ezekiel 42:20 , "to make a separation between the sanctuary and the profane place," as the Greeks distinguished between the βέβηλον and the ἱερόν (see Thucyd; 4.95). Its breadth and height were the same (comp. Revelation 21:16 )—one reed, of six cubits by the cubit and an hand-breadth ; that is to say, each cubit measured an ordinary cubit and a hand-breadth (comp. Ezekiel 43:13 ). Hengstenberg suggests that the greater cubit of Ezekiel was borrowed from the Chaldeans; and certainly Herodotus speaks of a royal cubit in Babylon which was three finger-breadths longer than the ordinary measure, while in Egypt also two such cubits of varying lengths were current; "from which it might be supposed," says Smend, "that the same thing held good for Asia Minor." Still, the hypothesis is likelier that the cubit in question was the old Mosaic cubit—the cubit of a man ( Deuteronomy 2:11 ), equal to the length of the forearm from the elbow to the end of the longest finger—which was employed in the building of the Solomonic temple ( 2 Chronicles 3:3 ). Assuming the cubit to have been eighteen inches, the height and breadth of the wall would be nine feet—no great elevation, and presenting a striking contrast to the colossal proportions of city walls in Babylon and in Greece (see Herod; 1.170; ' Records of the Past,' vol. 5.127, 1st series), and even of the walls of the first temple in Jerusalem (see Josephus, 'Wars,' 5.1); but in this, perhaps, lay a special significance, since, as the city-like temple stood in no need of walls and bulwarks for defense, the lowness of its walls would permit it the more easily to be seen, would, in fact, make it a conspicuous object to all who might approach it for worship.