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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Ezekiel 40:17 - 40:17
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The Outer Court Described and Measured
Eze 40:17. And he led me into the outer court, and behold there were cells and pavement made round the court; thirty cells on the pavement. Eze 40:18. And the pavement was by the side of the gates, corresponding to the length of the gates, (namely) the lower pavement. Eze 40:19. And he measured the breadth from the front of the lower gate to the front of the inner court, about a hundred cubits on the east side and on the north side. - Ezekiel having been led through the eastern gate into the outer court, was able to survey it, not on the eastern side only, but also on the northern and southern sides; and there he perceived cells and רִצְפָּה, pavimentum, mosaic pavement, or a floor paved with stones laid in mosaic form (2Ch 7:3; Est 1:6), made round the court; that is to say, according to the more precise description in v. 18, on both sides of the gate-buildings, of a breadth corresponding to their length, running along the inner side of the wall of the court, and consequently not covering the floor of the court in all its extent, but simply running along the inner side of the surrounding wall as a strip of about fifty cubits broad, and that not uniformly on all four sides, but simply on the eastern, southern, and northern sides, and at the north-west and south-west corners of the western side, so far, namely, as the outer court surrounded the inner court and temple (see Plate I b b b); for on the western side the intervening space from the inner court and temple-house to the surrounding wall of the outer court was filled by a special building of the separate place. It is with this limitation that we have to take סָבִיב סָבִיב. fעשׂוּy may belong either to לְשָׁכֹות וְרִצְפָּה or merely to רִצְפָּה, so far as grammatical considerations are concerned; for in either case there would be an irregularity in the gender, and the participle is put in the singular as a neuter. If we look fairly at the fact itself, not one of the reasons assigned by Kliefoth, for taking fעשׂוּy as referring to רִצְפָּה only, is applicable throughout. If the pavement ran round by the side of the gate-building on three sides of the court, and the cells were by or upon the pavement, they may have stood on three sides of the court without our being forced to assume, or even warranted in assuming, that they must of necessity have filled up the whole length on every side from the shoulder of the gate-building to the corner, or rather to the space that was set apart in every corner, according to Eze 46:21-24, for the cooking of the sacrificial meals of the people. We therefore prefer to take עָשׂוּי as referring to the cells and the pavement; because this answers better than the other, both to the construction and to the fact. In Eze 40:18 the pavement is said to have been by the shoulder of the gates. הַשְּׁעָרִים is in the plural, because Ezekiel had probably also in his mind the two gates which are not described till afterwards. כָּתֵף, the shoulder of the agate-buildings regarded as a body, is the space on either side of the gate-building along the wall, with the two angles formed by the longer side of the gate-buildings and the line of the surrounding wall. This is more precisely defined by 'לְעֻמַּת אֹרֶךְ השׁ, alongside of the length of the gates, i.e., running parallel with it (cf. 2Sa 16:13), or stretching out on both sides with a breadth corresponding to the length of the gate-buildings. The gates were fifty cubits long, or, deducting the thickness of the outer wall, they projected into the court to the distance of forty-four cubits. Consequently the pavement ran along the inner sides of the surrounding wall with a breadth of forty-four cubits. This pavement is called the lower pavement, in distinction from the pavement or floor of the inner court, which was on a higher elevation.
All that is said concerning the לְשָׁכֹות is, that there were thirty of them, and that they were אֶל הָרִצְפָּה (see Plate I C). The dispute whether אֶל signifies by or upon the pavement has no bearing upon the fact itself. As Ezekiel frequently uses אֶל for עַל, and vice versâ, the rendering upon can be defended; but it cannot be established, as Hitzig supposes, by referring to 2Ki 16:17. If we retain the literal meaning of אֶל, at or against, we cannot picture to ourselves the position of the cells as projecting from the inner edge of the pavement into the unpaved portion of the court; for in that case, to a person crossing the court, they would have stood in front of (לִפְנֵי) the pavement rather than against the pavement. The prep. אֶל, against, rather suggests the fact that the cells were built near the surrounding wall, so that the pavement ran along the front of them, which faced the inner court in an unbroken line. In this case it made no difference to the view whether the cells were erected upon the pavement, or the space occupied by the cells was left unpaved, and the pavement simply joined the lower edge of the walls of the cells all round. The text contains no account of the manner in which they were distributed on the three sides of the court. But it is obvious from the use of the plural לְשָׁכֹות, that the reference is not to thirty entire buildings, but simply to thirty rooms, as לִשְׁכָּה does not signify a building consisting of several rooms, but always a single room or cell in a building. Thus in 1Sa 9:22 it stands for a room appointed for holding the sacrificial meals, and that by no means a small room, but one which could accommodate about thirty persons. In Jer 36:12 it is applied to a room in the king's palace, used as the chancery. Elsewhere לִשְׁכָּה is the term constantly employed for the rooms in the court-buildings and side-buildings of the temple, which served partly as a residence for the officiating priests and Levites, and partly for the storing of the temple dues collected in the form of tithes, fruits, and money (vid., 2Ki 23:11; Jer 35:4; Jer 36:10; 1Ch 9:26; Neh 10:38 -40). Consequently we must not think of thirty separate buildings, but have to distribute the thirty cells on the three sides of the court in such a manner that there would be ten on each side, and for the sake of symmetry five in every building, standing both right and left between the gate-building and the corner kitchens. - In Eze 40:19 the size or compass of the outer court is determined. The breadth from the front of the lower gate to the front of the inner court was 100 cubits. הַשַּׁעַר הַתַּחְתֹּונָה, the gate of the lower court, i.e., the outer gate, which was lower than the inner. הַתַּחְתֹּונָה is not an adjective agreeing with שַׁעַר, for apart from Isa 14:31 שַׁעַר is never construed as a feminine; but it is used as a substantive for חָצֵר הַתַּחְתֹּונָה, the lower court, see the comm. on Eze 8:3. מִלִפְנֵי denotes the point from which the measuring started, and לִפְנֵי הֶחָצֵר the direction in which it proceeded, including also the terminus: “to before the inner court,” equivalent to “up to the front of the inner court,” The terminal point is more precisely defined by מִחוּץ, from without, which Hitzig proposes to erase as needless and unusual, but without any reason. For, inasmuch as the gateways of the inner court were built into the outer court, as is evident from what follows, מִחוּץ simply affirms that the measuring only extended to the point where the inner court commenced within the outer, namely, to the front of the porch of the gate, not to the boundary wall of the inner court, as this wall stood at a greater distance from the porch of the outer court-gate by the whole length of the court-gate, that is to say, as much as fifty cubits. From this more precise definition of the terminal point it follows still further, that the starting-point was not the boundary-wall, but the porch of the gate of the outer court; in other words, that the hundred cubits measured by the man did not include the fifty cubits' length of the gate-building, but this is expressly excluded. This is placed beyond all doubt by Eze 40:23 and Eze 40:27, where the distance of the inner court-gate from the gate (of the outer court) is said to have been a hundred cubits. - The closing words הַקָּדִים have been very properly separated by the Masoretes from what precedes, by means of the Athnach, for they are not to be taken in close connection with וַיָּמָד; nor are they to be rendered, “he measured...toward the east and toward the north” for this would be at variance with the statement, “to the front of the inner court.” They are rather meant to supply a further appositional definition to the whole of the preceding clause: “he measured from...a hundred cubits,” relating to the east side and the north side of the court, and affirm that the measuring took place from gate to gate both on the eastern and on the northern side; in other words, that the measure given, a hundred cubits, applied to the eastern side as well as the northern; and thus they prepare the way for the description of the north gate, which follows from Eze 40:20 onwards.