Ezekiel 42:3 - Exposition

Considerable difficulty attaches to the words of this verse. The twenty cubits which were for the inner court (better, the twenty which belonged to the inner court ) have been taken by Kliefoth to signify the watchers' coils in the inner court, west of the north door ( Ezekiel 40:40-46 ), and by Plumptre to indicate an inner area of twenty cubits square, round which the galleries in three stories ran. Both of these views, however, have this against them, that they are purely conjectural, the text in Ezekiel 40:40-46 saying nothing about twenty cubits in connection with the priests' chambers, and the text under review making no suggestion of an inner area of twenty cubits, but only of the already well-known "inner court." Hence the opinion of Ewald, Hengstenberg, Keil, Schroder, and Currey has most in its favor, that the "twenty" alongside of which the chamber now alluded to lay, meant the twenty cubits clear space which surrounded the temple on the south, west, and north sides (see Ezekiel 41:12-14 ), and which could properly be spoken of as "for the inner court," rather as "belonging to the inner court," since it was practically a continuation of the same. The pavement which was for (or, belonged to ) the outer court , was manifestly that already described as running along the inside of the outer wall (see Ezekiel 40:17 ). If, as is likely, this pavement was continued along the north side of the inner court wall, then the priests' chambers must have stood upon it, and been over against it on the east side, as Currey explains; but the easier and more natural supposition is that adopted by Keil, that the second "over against" points to that which faced the chambers on the north, viz. the pavement, as the first marked their boundary on the south. Gallery against gallery (see on Ezekiel 41:15 ). In three stories; or, in the third story (Revised Version). Whether these galleries existed in each of three stories of the building, or only in the third, cannot be determined. If בַּשְּׁלִשִׁים , "in the thirds" occurs elsewhere only in Genesis 6:16 , to denote the chambers or rooms of the third story in the ark, as Smend observes, "the expression might also quite naturally signify three stories, one above another."