1 Kings 6:6

6. The nethermost chamber That is, the lower story of the wing, containing the first floor of side-chambers.

Five… six… seven cubits broad So, as in Ezekiel’s temple, there was an enlarging of these side-chambers upward, (Ezekiel 41:7,) so that those of the upper story were two cubits broader than those of the nethermost. This was caused, as is immediately stated, by the narrowed rests, or rebatements, ( מגרעות , used only here,) which he built around three sides of the house outside of and against the main wall. The addition by our translators of the walls and the beams is somewhat confusing. The latter half of this verse is as follows: For rebatements he gave to the house round about on the outside in order not to fasten in the walls of the house. That is, these rebatements were purposely built that the several stories of side-chambers, by resting on such ledges of exterior wall, might not in any way penetrate or detract from the strength and wholeness of the main wall of the temple.

Mr. T.O. Paine, in his work on “Solomon’s Temple,” propounds a new and ingenious plan of the whole edifice by making these wings and side-chambers consist of galleries on the inside of the house, and supported on the outside by three rows of pillars, the pillars varying in height according to the several galleries. But one of his principal arguments is a misinterpretation of Ezekiel 41:7 by making the “enlarging upward” refer to the entire building rather than to the interior of the side-chambers. And his entire plan is open to many and insuperable objections, only a few of which we need here mention: 1.) It is difficult to conceive what purpose such open galleries served; and, so far as we can find, they have no counterpart nor analogy in ancient architecture. 2.) The making of the side-chambers a part of the entire visible interior conflicts with the obvious import of 1 Kings 6:5-6; 1 Kings 6:10 of this chapter, according to which they were built against the outside of the wall. 3.) Mr. Paine’s plan makes the walls more of a breastwork or substructure than a wall a low enclosure running round the central part of the building, and not reaching half-way to the roof. Accordingly, the height of the walls was not thirty cubits, (as we naturally infer from 1 Kings 6:2,) and the width of the building was not, properly, twenty cubits, but varied with every gallery. 4.) Finally, the whole plan is chiefly drawn from the temple seen in vision by Ezekiel, (chap. xli,) and depends upon the assumption that that temple of vision was an exact pattern of Solomon’s temple that had been destroyed by the Chaldeans.

This assumption, we think, Mr. Paine utterly fails to establish. It is a theory which is quite generally rejected by the most careful modern expositors, and is therefore, at best, too uncertain and unreliable a guide to a satisfactory restoration of the ancient temple.