2. The millennial temple 40:5-42:20

Earlier Ezekiel hinted that there would be a future temple in the restored Promised Land (20:40; 37:24-28). Now he described it in considerable detail. Some of the detail is here to help the reader understand what the writer recorded later about what would happen in this complex (chs. 43-46): stage setting. Some of it is here to help the reader realize that the temple being described is not one that has stood in the past; it is a future temple. This section has a basic chiastic structure centering on the description of the inner court and the things associated with it. Ezekiel's guide led him from outside the temple enclosure into its inner court and then back out of the complex.

The ancient Israelites always worshipped God outdoors, in the courtyards that surrounded the temple itself. Only the priests entered the temple building. In this temple the people had access to the outer courtyard only; the priests alone used the inner courtyard.

"The restored temple represents God's desire to be in the midst of his people and suggests his accessibility to them and desire to bless them (see, e.g., 48:35; Rev 21:3-4; 22:1-4)."⁵¹⁶

The man who escorted Ezekiel around in his vision proceeded from the outside of the temple complex to the inside.

 The wall 40:5

The man first measured the thickness and the height of the wall around the temple complex. Measuring not only provides data but implies ownership (cf. Zech. 2:1; Rev. 11:1; 21:15); the man measured as God's representative. He used the six-cubit reed that was in his hand. The wall was six cubits (one rod) thick and six cubits high. Walls, of course, provided a barrier and guarded the holiness of God in Israel's earlier tabernacle and temple complexes.

A normal cubit was the distance between the tip of a person's middle finger and the end of his elbow, about 18 inches (Deut. 3:11). A handbreadth was about three inches. A long cubit was about 21 inches long, the length of a normal cubit plus a handbreadth. Since each of the cubits of the man's measuring rod was a cubit and a handbreadth, it seems that the cubits in view in these dimensions were long cubits (cf. 43:13). Six long cubits (one rod) equals about 10 feet.

 The outer east gate complex 40:6-16 

The amount of detail devoted to the descriptions of the gate complexes, both outer and inner, emphasizes that access into the temple will be strictly controlled.

40:6 Ezekiel's guide next measured the gate of the city that faced east, that is, the gate complex. He probably measured the east gate first because it was in a direct line with the entrance to the temple proper. Temple gates provided access but restricted that access in relation to God's presence. The threshold, the area of the gate at the top of the stairs within the wall (vv. 22, 26), was one rod (six cubits) deep (10 feet), the thickness of the wall around the whole temple compound.

40:7 Each guardroom in the gate complex was a square one rod long and one rod wide (or six cubits by six cubits, 10 feet by 10 feet, v. 12). There were really six guardrooms, three on each side of the hallway through the gate complex (v. 10). A wall five cubits thick separated the guardrooms on the same sides of the hallway from each other. Beyond these guardrooms there was another threshold that led to a large vestibule room. This threshold was the same size as the one at the other end of the passage, six cubits deep and 10 cubits wide.

40:8-9 The vestibule stood at the far end of the gate complex and faced the courtyard. It was eight cubits deep and 25 cubits wide. Evidently the opening from this vestibule into the courtyard was 10 cubits wide, but the "side pillars"supporting the door frames around the opening were one cubit wide on each side leaving an opening of eight cubits.

40:10 There was a total of six guardrooms in the gate complex, three on each side of the main hallway, and they were all the same size.

40:11 The gateway into the gate complex from the east, the main entrance, was 10 cubits wide. The main hallway ("gate") was 13 cubits wide.

40:12 Each guardroom was six cubits square. Evidently each one had a one-cubit thick low wall that defined each of these rooms as separate from the hallway. This low wall or ledge ran on each side of the hallway in front of the guardrooms.

40:13 The interior width of the gate complex, measuring the ceiling above one guardroom, the hallway, and another guardroom, was 25 cubits (cf. v. 21). Evidently there were doors in the walls of the guardrooms that covered windows or niches in those walls (cf. v. 16; 41:16).

40:14-15 The height of the door frames surrounding the main gate was 60 cubits (100 feet).⁵¹⁷The gate system's walls wrapped around from the main wall of the temple enclosure to the door jambs that framed the doorway into the courtyard (v. 9). The total length of the passageway from the front gate to the doorway into the courtyard was 50 cubits.

40:16 There were shuttered windows or alcoves in the exterior walls of the guardrooms and vestibule. Representations of palm trees decorated the door frames, one on each side of each door (v. 26). Palm trees were symbols of beauty, fruitfulness, salvation, glory, and the millennial age (cf. Lev. 23:40; 1 Kings 6:29, 32, 35; 7:36; 2 Chron. 3:5; Song of Sol. 7:7; Ps. 92:12-14; Neh. 8:15; Zech. 14:16-21).

"The entire gate system resembled the multiple entry gates archaeologists discovered from the Solomonic period. There were several guard rooms (cf. 1 Kings 24:28; 2 Chron. 12:11), or alcoves, on either side of the inner part of the Solomonic gate."⁵¹⁸

 The outer court 40:17-27 

40:17-19 The passageway in the eastern gate complex led into a courtyard. This was the outer court that contained an inner court within it. Around the perimeter of this outer court were 30 rooms. It is not clear if they were on three sides of the courtyard or four, and it is not clear what function they served. Perhaps they were meeting or storage rooms. A pavement, probably mosaic (cf. 2 Chron. 7:3; Esth. 1:6), known as the lower pavement formed a 50-cubit-wide border around the outer edge of the outer courtyard (cf. v. 15). Ezekiel's guide measured the outer courtyard between the outer and inner gates, and this space was 100 cubits wide (about 166 feet) on the east and north sides (and evidently on the south side too).

40:20-23 There was a gate complex on the north side of the wall that was identical to the one on the east (vv. 6-16). It too was 50 cubits long and 25 cubits wide, excluding its stairway. Seven steps led into the gate complex from the outside up to its threshold (v. 6). Looking straight through the north gate or through the east gate one could see, 100 cubits beyond (cf. v. 19), another inner gate complex. Ezekiel saw two of these inner gate complexes, one on the north side of the inner courtyard and one on the east side.

40:24-27 The measuring man took Ezekiel to the south side of the wall where he discovered the same arrangement that he had seen on the east and north sides.

 The inner court 40:28-47

This section includes descriptions of the three inner gate complexes, the rooms and implements used for preparing sacrifices, the rooms for the singers and priests, and the inner court itself.

 The temple and its outbuilding 40:48-41:26

It is interesting to compare this temple with the one that Solomon built (1 Kings 6-7). There are similarities but also differences.

 The priests' eating and dressing rooms 42:1-14 

This is a very difficult section to interpret because the description of these structures is obscure in the Hebrew text.

42:1-2 Ezekiel's guide next took him out the north inner gate into the outer court and showed him another building. It stood between the "separate area,"the 20-cubit space that bordered the temple proper, and "the building toward the north,"evidently the complex of rooms in the outer court that stood against the north wall of the temple complex. The length of this building, east to west, was 100 cubits, and its width, north to south, was 50 cubits. This structure had a door on its north side.

42:3-4 There were colonnades (galleries, covered porches) outside this building facing the inner and outer courts (north and south). These matching colonnades were three stories high as was the building itself. A 10-cubit-wide interior hallway ran the length of this building east to west and provided access to the rooms.

42:5-6 The rooms on the third story were smaller than the ones on the first and second stories because the colonnade on the third story took more room than the colonnades on the first and second stories. The third story colonnade did not rest on the exterior walls that reached down to the ground but on top of second-story rooms. Thus the third story colonnade was set back from the exterior walls rather than flush with the ones below it.

42:7-9 The north facade of this building, facing the outer court, was only 50 cubits wide. Perhaps the roof line was 100 cubits long, and there was an open space 50 cubits wide under the roof to the east of this facade. The south facade was 100 cubits long, the west facade was 50 cubits long, and the north facade was 50 cubits long.

42:10-12 There was a corresponding structure on the south side of the temple proper, the mirror image of the one on the north.⁵²⁸It too stood between the outer court and the "separate area"and faced the temple building.

42:13-14 Ezekiel's guide informed him that the rooms to the north and south of the "separate area"were for the priests to use when they ate the sacrifices that people brought to the temple.⁵²⁹They would deposit the offerings in these rooms. They were also dressing rooms for the priests since they could not go from the "separate area"or the inner court into the outer court without changing their clothes. In view of this statement, there must have been access into each of these two buildings from the "separate area"as well as from the outer court.

 The dimensions of the temple enclosure 42:15-20

When the man had finished measuring the temple and the structures immediately associated with it, he led Ezekiel out the east outer gate. He measured the exterior of the temple wall, and it was 500 cubits (about 830 feet) on each of its four sides (cf. Rev. 21:13).⁵³⁰This enclosed area is about 18 acres, larger than 13 American football fields.⁵³¹The man measured the wall with his measuring reed. The wall around the temple area separated what was holy inside from what was common outside.

"The entire area was much too large for Mount Moriah where Solomon's and Zerubbabel's temples stood. The scheme requires a great change in the topography of the land which will occur as indicated in Zechariah 14:9-11, the very time which Ezekiel had in view."⁵³²