1 Kings 6:5

5. Against the wall On the outside of the main building, as the sequel shows, and built up against it, as a lateral building, or lean-to.

Chambers The Hebrew word thus rendered, ( יצוע , here and in 1 Kings 6:10 construed as masculine, and taken collectively, as the plural rendering shows, but feminine in 1 Kings 6:6, where it is rendered in the singular,) comes from a root signifying to spread out, as in spreading a couch, and is used in the sense of a couch or bed in Genesis 49:4; 1 Chronicles 5:1; Job 17:13; Psalms 63:7; Psalms 132:3. It is evidently here used as an architectural term, and designates a wing or side-building, containing three stories of chambers, and extending around three sides of the entire building, namely, on the south, west, and north. Rawlinson translates it a lean-to. Margin, floors. Perhaps the nearest equivalent in our language would be a wing.

Against the walls This expression is repeated, with walls in the plural, to introduce the more precise statement that the wing extended around the entire building; that is, the walls both of the temple and of the oracle. The oracle was the most holy place, the innermost apartment of the house. (C in plan.) See on 1 Kings 6:16. Its Hebrew name is דביר , Debir, derived by a number of scholars from דבר , to speak; hence the speaking place; the place where Jehovah spoke with his people. But Gesenius, Furst, and most recent critics, derive it from an Arabic root signifying to be behind; hence the hindmost or inner apartment; the adytum. It is often thus distinguished from the holy place before it, (B in plan,) in which case the latter is called, as here, the temple, (compare 1 Kings 6:3; 1 Kings 6:17,) “the house,” or “the greater house.” 2 Chronicles 3:5.

Chambers This is in the Hebrew a different word from that rendered chambers above. The margin gives the literal meaning, ribs, ( צלעות ,) but there is little doubt that the word, as used here and in Ezekiel 41:6, means side-chambers the different apartments into which the wings above described were partitioned. ( c c c in plan.) The purpose which these side-chambers was designed to serve is nowhere stated in the Scriptures. According to Thenius, they were expensively furnished sleeping apartments for the priests. They may also have been used as store-rooms for depositing consecrated gifts and sacred relics.