Ezekiel 41:13

So he measured the house, an hundred cubits long; and the separate place, and the building, with the walls thereof, an hundred cubits long;

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

41:1-26 After the prophet had observed the courts, he was brought to the temple. If we attend to instructions in the plainer parts of religion, and profit by them, we shall be led further into an acquaintance with the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

The separate place - See F, Plan II. The word occurs only in this chapter. The name, which seems one of discredit, has led to the conjecture that the purpose of this place and its building was to receive the offal of the sacrifices and sweepings of the courts, to be carried thence by a postern gate (compare Ezekiel 43:21). The building itself was, we are told, seventy cubits wide, with walls five cubits thick (eighty cubits in all), leaving ten cubits on each side to make up the 100 cubits from north to south. The length was ninety cubits, which, adding as before the thickness of the walls, gives 100 cubits in length. The whole temple-building was 500 cubits from west to east, and from north to south, 500 cubits.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

12-15. Sum of the measures of the temple, and of the buildings behind and on the side of it.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

The house; the whole temple, oracle, sanctuary, and porch, with the walls.

An hundred cubits long, from east to west, thus: Stairs of the east porch or the thickness of the wall six cubits, the passage through the porch eleven, wall of the temple within the porch six cubits, the temple itself forty cubits, partition wall two cubits, the oracle twenty cubits, west wall thick six cubits, the chambers at bottom of the west wall four cubits, and the outer wall of the chambers five cubits.

The separate place: see Ezekiel 41:12.

The building, on both the north and south side of the temple.

An hundred cubits long; which is thus reckoned: The breadth of the temple twenty cubits, thickness of both walls twelve cubits, the bottom chambers on both sides eight cubits, the outer walls of these chambers five cubits a piece, the breadth of the place left out on each side five, on both sides ten, (i.e. five each,) and then the wideness between this on either side twenty cubits.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

So he measured the house, an hundred cubits long,.... The whole temple, the parts of which he had measured; and this is the sum total:

and the separate place, and the building, with the walls thereof, an hundred cubits long; these are the several parts of the house or temple: the "separate place", the holy of holies, the building, the sanctuary or holy place; which, with the walls thereof, made a hundred cubits in length from east to west, thus; the thickness of the wall of the east porch, six cubits; the passage through the porch, eleven cubits; the wall between the porch and the temple, six cubits; the temple or holy place, forty cubits; the wall between that and the most holy place, two cubits; the holiest of all, twenty cubits; the thickness of the west wall, six cubits; the chambers at the end of it, four cubits; and the outer wall of them, five cubits; in all a hundred cubits: for this cannot be understood of the separate place, and the building before it, or rather behind it; since the separate place, or holiest of all, was twenty cubits, and the building ninety cubits; besides the thickness of each wall, five cubits a piece; in all a hundred and twenty.

Geneva Study Bible

So he measured the house, an hundred cubits long; and the separate place, and the building, with the walls thereof, an hundred cubits long;

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

13. Two measurements of 100 cubits E. to W

house an hundred cubits long] namely, 5 (wall of porch, Ezekiel 40:48) + 12 (porch, Ezekiel 40:49) + 6 (wall of holy place, Ezekiel 41:1) + 40 (length of holy place, Ezekiel 41:2) + 2 (wall of holiest, Ezekiel 41:3) + 20 (length of holiest, Ezekiel 41:4) + 6 (wall of house, Ezekiel 41:5) + 4 (side-chambers, Ezekiel 41:5) + 5 (wall of side-chambers, Ezekiel 41:9) = 100. Here it is evident that on the W. of the house the margin or “that which was left” of the raised basement does not appear. It existed only on two sides N. and S., where the doors of the side-chambers opened from it; on the W. the “separate place” skirted the wall of the side-chambers.

separate place, and the building] The “building” here (though spelled differently) can be no other than that mentioned Ezekiel 41:12, Fig. 3, K. The “separate place” or court of 20 cubits, Fig. 3, H, being added to this building formed a length of 100 cubits, viz. 20 (separate place) + 5 + 5 (two walls of building) + 70 (interior of building) = 100, Fig. 3, np.

13–15. General measurements of length and breadth of buildings.—These measurements form three squares of 100 cubits. First, the inner court forms a square of 100 cubits when lines are drawn along the front of the house and in front of the inner ends of the gates, Fig. 3, iklm. Secondly, the house buildings form a square of 100 cubits, when the 20 cubits of “separate place” N. and S. of them are included, Fig. 3, lmno. And thirdly, the building W. of the house buildings forms a square of 100 cubits when the twenty cubits of “separate place” are added to its dimensions from E. to W., Fig. 3, nopq.

Ezekiel 41:13

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

The Separate Place, and the External Dimensions of the Temple

Ezekiel 41:12. And the building at the front of the separate place was seventy cubits broad on the side turned toward the west, and the wall of the building five cubits broad round about, and its length ninety cubits. Ezekiel 41:13. And he measured the (temple) house: the length a hundred cubits; and the separate place, and its building, and its walls: the length a hundred cubits. Ezekiel 41:14. And the breadth of the face of the (temple) house, and of the separate place toward the east, a hundred cubits. - The explanation of these verses depends upon the meaning of the word גּזרה. According to its derivation from גּזר, to cut, to separate, גּזרה means that which is cut off, or separated. Thus ארץ גּזרה is the land cut off, the desert, which is not connected by roads with the inhabited country. In the passage before us, גּזרה signifies a place on the western side of the temple, i.e., behind the temple, which was separated from the sanctuary (Plate I J), and on which a building stood, but concerning the purpose of which nothing more definite is stated than we are able to gather, partly from the name and situation of the place in question, and partly from such passages as 1 Chronicles 26:18 and 2 Kings 23:11, according to which, even in Solomon's temple, there was a similar space at the back of the temple house with buildings upon it, which had a separate way out, the gate שׁלּכת, namely, that "this space,with its buildings, was to be used for the reception of all refuse, sweepings, all kinds of rubbish, - in brief, of everything that was separated or rejected when the holy service was performed in the temple, - and that this was the reason why it received the name of the separate place" (Kliefoth). The building upon this space was situated אל־פּני־הגּזרה, in the front of the gizrah (that is to say, as one approached it from the temple); and that פּאת דּרך־היּם, on the side of the way to the sea, i.e., on the western side, sc. of the temple, and had a breadth of seventy cubits (from north to south), with a wall round about, which was five cubits broad (thick), and a length of ninety cubits. As the thickness of the wall is specially mentioned in connection with the breadth, we must add it both to the breadth and to the length of the building as given here; so that, when looked at from the outside, the building was eighty cubits broad and a hundred cubits long. In Ezekiel 41:13 this length is expressly attributed to the separate place, and (i.e., along with) its building, and the walls thereof. But the length of the temple house has also been previously stated as a hundred cubits. In Ezekiel 41:14 the breadth of both is also stated to have been a hundred cubits - namely, the breadth of the outer front, or front face of the temple, was a hundred cubits; and the breadth of the separate place לקּדים toward the east, i.e., the breadth which it showed to the person measuring on the eastern side, was the same. If, them, the building on the separate place was only eighty cubits broad, according to Ezekiel 41:12, including the walls, whilst the separate place itself was a hundred cubits broad, there remains a space of twenty cubits in breadth not covered by the building; that is to say, as we need not hesitate to put the building in the centre, open spaces of ten cubits each on the northern and southern sides were left as approaches to the building on both sides (K), whereas the entire length of the separate place (from east to west) was covered by the building. - All these measurements are in perfect harmony. As the inner court formed a square of a hundred cubits in length (Ezekiel 40:47), the temple house, which joined it on the west, extended with its appurtenances to a similar length; and the separate place behind the temple also covered a space of equal size. These three squares, therefore, had a length from east to west of three hundred cubits. If we add to this the length of the buildings of the east gates of the inner and outer courts, namely fifty cubits for each (Ezekiel 40:15, Ezekiel 40:21, Ezekiel 40:25, Ezekiel 40:29, Ezekiel 40:33, Ezekiel 40:36), and the length of the outer court from gate to gate a hundred cubits (Ezekiel 40:19, Ezekiel 40:23, Ezekiel 40:27), we obtain for the whole of the temple building the length of five hundred cubits. If, again, we add to the breadth of the inner court or temple house, which was one hundred cubits, the breadths of the outer court, with the outer and inner gate-buildings, viz., two hundred cubits on both the north and south sides, we obtain a total breadth of 100 + 200 + 200 equals 500 (say five hundred) cubits; so that the whole building covered a space of five hundred cubits square, in harmony with the calculation already made (at Ezekiel 40:24-27) of the size of the surrounding wall.