What does Ezechiel Chapter 41 say, and which statements belong to its speaker?

Atlas of Saints · Chapter summary

Temple, sanctuary and chambers receive separate dimensions. Edition alternatives remain distinct from the measurements. Carvings, a wooden table and folding doors complete the survey.

Chapter breakdown

Ezechiel 41 measures the temple's fronts at six cubits each, the tabernacle's breadth, with a ten-cubit gate and five-cubit sides; the house is forty cubits long and twenty broad. Farther inward, a two-cubit front, six-cubit gate and seven-cubit gate breadth precede the twenty-by-twenty holy of holies. No twenty-cubit height or cube is stated. The edition separately says part of the plan concerns the material rebuilt temple and part Christ's Church mystically.

A six-cubit wall accompanies side chambers four cubits broad. Their number is expressed as twice thirty-three, one by another; the edition distinguishes side-by-side placement from an over-another rendering. It must not be rewritten as thirty-three rooms divided over three floors. Chambers are supported outward without touching the temple wall. A broad passage and winding stairs reach the upper loft through the middle, and the higher parts are broader. Foundations measure a reed of six cubits, the outside wall five; the edition offers interpretations of the inward house and a Hebrew reading about a five-cubit inside wall. Twenty cubits intervene between chambers around the house. Chamber doors open toward a place of prayer, five cubits around, north and south.

The separate building toward the sea is seventy cubits broad, with a five-cubit wall and ninety-cubit length. The house measures a hundred cubits in length; the separate building and walls also a hundred in length, and the eastward house front and separate place a hundred in breadth. The rear building and its galleries measure a hundred. These individual dimensions do not describe an aggregate hundred-cubit-square estate. The inner temple and court porch have thresholds, oblique windows and galleries on three sides, floored with wood, with windows shut over doors; cedar is not named.

Cherubims alternate with palms, each cherub having a man's face and a lion's face toward neighboring palms. Carving extends from ground to gate height, and the gates are square. A wooden altar is three cubits high and two long, with wooden corners and walls, identified as the table before the Lord. Its exact placement or a doctrine replacing blood sacrifice is not supplied. Temple and sanctuary have two doors with folding wickets, two on each side. Doors bear cherubims and palms like walls, thicker planks stand on the outer porch, and oblique windows and palms appear on porch sides and wall breadths.

The story inside

Opening: Temple, sanctuary and chambers receive separate dimensions. Development: Edition alternatives remain distinct from the measurements. Conclusion: Carvings, a wooden table and folding doors complete the survey.

Lessons worth keeping

1
Temple, sanctuary and chambers receive separate dimensions.
2
Edition alternatives remain distinct from the measurements.
3
Carvings, a wooden table and folding doors complete the survey.

Test your recall

Which images and requests does the speaker use, and what does the chapter leave unresolved?

Source edition and notes

Douay–Rheims, revised by Richard Challoner (1749–1752). Project Gutenberg no. 1581. Locators refer to lines in the admitted pg1581.txt edition. Source notes may include Challoner commentary.

Lines 95881–95888
41:1. And he brought me into the temple, and he measured the fronts six cubits broad on this side, and six cubits on that side, the breadth of the tabernacle. The temple.... This plan of a temple, which was here shewn to the prophet in a vision, partly had relation to the material temple, which was to be rebuilt: and partly, in a mystical sense, to the spiritual temple of God, the church of Christ.
Lines 95896–95904
and the gate six cubits, and the breadth of the gate seven cubits. 41:4. And he measured the length thereof twenty cubits, and the breadth twenty cubits, before the face of the temple: and he said to me: This is the holy of holies. 41:5. And he measured the wall of the house six cubits: and the breadth of every side chamber four cubits round about the house on every side.
Lines 95968–95982
through all the house round about. 41:20. From the ground even to the upper parts of the gate, were cherubims and palm trees wrought in the wall of the temple. 41:21. The threshold was foursquare, and the face of the sanctuary sight to sight. The threshold was foursquare.... That is, the gate of the temple was foursquare: and so placed as to answer the gate of the sanctuary within. 41:22. The altar of wood was three cubits high: and the length thereof was two cubits: and the corners thereof, and the length thereof, and the walls thereof, were of wood. And he said to me: This is the table