Ezekiel 42:2 - Exposition

With this verse the Authorized and Revised Versions begin a new sentence, and are in this at one with Smend; but the majority of expositors place the second verse under the regimen of the verb, "he brought me," in Ezekiel 42:1 , and understand the seer to state that he was planted down before the length (or, long side) of an hundred cubits , with the door toward the north , and the breadth fifty cubits. That is to say, the building which contained the sacristies, or priests' chambers, was a hundred cubits long and fifty bread. As the building on the separate place was also a hundred cubits long ( Ezekiel 41:13 ), it might seem as if this erection ran exactly parallel to that, and this view is taken by Hengstenberg, Schroder, and Plumptre; but Kliefoth, Keil, and Currey, on the authority of Ezekiel 46:19 , locate a priests' kitchen behind the priests' chambers towards the west, and reserve for it forty cubits, on the plausible ground that it would not likely be smaller in size than the sacrificial kitchen for the people (see Ezekiel 46:22 ). Hence, if the building under consideration began forty cubits east of the gizrah wall, it would extend twenty cubits over the end and along the length of the temple.