Ezekielchapter 41
26 verses · Ezekiel · 593 to 571 BC · The Prophets
Then the man brought me into the outer sanctuary and measured the side pillars to be six cubits wide on each side.
Introduction
Ezekiel, The Prophets, Ezekiel Overview.
Ezekiel continues his account of the temple vision for exiles whose fathers had served in Solomon's house. Many of them could compare each dimension he gave with the building they had known. In this chapter the guide leaves the courts and measures the house itself, from its porch to its innermost room. Listen for the one room the guide enters alone and the name he gives it. Listen also for the care taken over walls, ledges and doors, and for the carved figures on every surface. The shape follows the old house while the courts around it grow larger.
Context
- Who
- Exiles whose fathers had served in Solomon's temple and could compare every dimension
- What
- The measuring of the temple building, with its porch, main hall, most holy place, side chambers, a building to the west and its carved decoration.
- Where
- In vision, inside the temple building on the mountain in the land of Israel.
- When
- The twenty-fifth year of the exile, about 573 BC, within the vision dated in Ezekiel 40:1.
- Why
- To show a house built to keep the holy apart from the common, after the book has explained why the first house was defiled.
Historical context
The building follows the plan the hearers knew. A porch, then a main hall about forty cubits by twenty, then an innermost room twenty by twenty, the same proportions as Solomon's temple, which their grandfathers had worshipped in. When the guide measures the inner room he tells Ezekiel this is the most holy place, and notably he goes in alone; the prophet, priest though he is, stays outside.
Show the rest of the historical context, 3 more paragraphs
The side chambers are built in three storeys around three sides of the sanctuary, and the text explains the construction detail: the wall of the house was stepped back at each level so the supporting beams rested on the ledges and did not have to be set into the sanctuary wall itself. That is exactly the technique described in the building of Solomon's temple. The holy wall is not pierced by ordinary joinery.
The decoration is Levantine craftsmanship of a familiar kind. The walls are panelled with wood and carved from floor to above the doors with palm trees alternating with cherubim, each cherub having two faces, a human face toward the palm on one side and a young lion's face toward the palm on the other. Carved and ivory-inlaid panels combining palmettes with winged creatures are found across the Levant from this era, so the style would have looked right to anyone who had seen the old house.
Two things are conspicuously absent or altered. There is no mention of the ark in the most holy place, the ark had gone with Jerusalem. And the piece of furniture in the main hall is described as a wooden altar three cubits high, which the guide calls the table that is before the LORD.
Significance
Old men in that community had grown up on descriptions of the house Solomon built and had heard it burn described by a survivor. Here is a house measured in front of them with the same shape and larger courts.
Show the rest of the significance, 1 more paragraph
The care taken over the walls says something quietly. Every measurement in this chapter is about separating what is holy from what is not, thickness, ledges, panelling, doors. After chapters of explaining why the first house was defiled, the exiles are shown one built so that it cannot be.
This chapter in Jewish lifeWhat this chapter is in Jewish life and reading.
What is done
The site's own table in src/lib/hebraic/readings.ts, probed for this lane, printed no weekly portion and no Haftarah from this chapter, and no festival reading for the book. That table carries the Haftarah of each of the fifty-four weekly portions and the books read whole at the feasts, and it carries nothing for the special Sabbaths or the fast days. This card therefore names no public reading of the chapter and leaves that question to a source that holds those readings.
The corpus joins the chapter to the weeks of the Torah portions through the works arranged by portion. Under the seventh verse it carries Midrash Tanchuma Buber, Pekudei 8:4, Midrash Tanchuma Buber, Tzav 16:1 and Midrash Tanchuma, Tzav 12:1. Under the thirteenth verse it carries Midrash Tanchuma, Shemot 4:3.
How it is read
Rashi is the one commentator on this chapter whose English the corpus carries, quoted here from The Judaica Press complete Tanach with Rashi, translated by A. J. Rosenberg, which Sefaria reports as CC-BY. Every quotation of it is held to fifty words or fewer because the translation is modern.
Rashi reads the measuring of the House against the Temple the Mishnah describes, and he marks each place where the two part. The side chambers number thirty-three here, "But in the Second Temple, there were thirty-eight" (Rashi on Ezekiel 41:6:2). The chambers stood twenty cubits from the cells around the House, and "It was not so in the Second Temple edifice, but [it will be so] in the future edifice" (Rashi on Ezekiel 41:10:1). Where the prophet gives no height, Rashi takes it from Middoth 4:6, "with a height of one hundred cubits" (Rashi on Ezekiel 41:8:1).
At the thirteenth verse he sets the whole length of one hundred cubits beside the Mishnah's figures, wall by wall, in Middoth 4:6 and 4:7. He finds them the same but for one cubit. The partition here is two cubits against the Mishnah's one, and the cell is a cubit narrower to balance it (Rashi on Ezekiel 41:13:1). The western side of seventy cubits he finds the same in both (Rashi on Ezekiel 41:12:1).
Two notes set a reading he heard against his own. At the doorposts he reports that in Solomon's House the doorpost was fourfold, "but I say that the doorposts were square" (Rashi on Ezekiel 41:21:1). At the wooden altar he gives Targum Jonathan, in which the table is called an altar, "because nowadays it atones like an altar" (Rashi on Ezekiel 41:22:1).
The doors of the last verses draw his longest note. He gives Middoth 4:1 on the four doors of the Heichal and then the view of Rabbi Yehudah. There the doors folded back upon each other "like the wooden tablets upon which [scribes] write using an iron stylus" (Rashi on Ezekiel 41:24:1).
What the rabbis say
The corpus carries twenty-seven rabbinic locators on this chapter and the text of none, so each is cited and linked here rather than quoted. On the sixth verse it holds Bava Batra 61a:3, Bava Batra 75b:11 and Ein Yaakov (Glick Edition), Bava Batra 5:31. It also holds Ein Yaakov, Bava Batra 5:20 there. On the seventh verse it holds Midrash Aggadah, Leviticus 8:3:2, Midrash Tanchuma Buber, Pekudei 8:4 and Midrash Tanchuma Buber, Tzav 16:1. It also holds Midrash Tanchuma, Tzav 12:1, Midrash Tehillim 61:3 and Pesikta DeRav Kahana 20:7 there. It also holds Pesikta Rabbati 41:1, Shir HaShirim Rabbah 7:5:3 and Sifrei Devarim 1:19 there. It also holds Yalkut Shimoni on Torah 133:27 and Yalkut Shimoni on Torah 417:2 there. On the thirteenth verse it holds Midrash Tanchuma, Shemot 4:3. On the fifteenth verse it holds Tractate Soferim 7:4.
On the twenty-second verse it holds Berakhot 55a:3, Chagigah 27a:1 and Chagigah 27a:6. It also holds Ein Yaakov, Berakhot 9:5, Ein Yaakov, Khagigah 3:5 and Jerusalem Talmud Chagigah 3:8:5 there. It also holds Menachot 97a:3, Midrash Mishlei 9:1 and Yalkut Shimoni on Torah 369:3 there. On the twenty-sixth verse it holds Bava Kamma 67a:1. What each of them teaches is a saying of the rabbis, and is reported as theirs wherever this site quotes one. The quotations wait on a fetch that carries the text.
Sources: Rashi, Rashi on Ezekiel 41:1:1 to 41:24:1, The Judaica Press complete Tanach with Rashi, translated by A. J. Rosenberg, reported CC-BY; The Sefaria corpus, scripts/data/sources/sefaria/ezekiel/41.json, the 27 Talmud and Midrash locators of this chapter; The site's own files, src/lib/hebraic/readings.ts, probed for this chapter and printing no weekly portion, no Haftarah and no festival reading.
The heads below are this chapter's scenes. The numbered points under each are its verses.
The nave, the most holy place, and the side chambers
Ezekiel 41:1-4
brought me into the outer sanctuary: The guide measures the outer sanctuary, forty cubits by twenty, then goes into the inner sanctuary. His own words name the room: “This is the Most Holy Place”. Gill notes the slowness of the tour, so that the reader reaches the innermost room only after every approach has been counted.
Ezekiel 41:1
“The Temple - Properly the holy place (a), as distinguished from the porch (G) and the holy of holies (B) 1Ki 6:17; 1Ki 7:50. The posts - The outer wall of the temple was six cubits thick Eze 41:5. The eastern posts of this wall forming part of the front of the temple were ornamented with pillars, six cubits on each side. He measured the breadth - This breadth was twenty cubits Eze 41:2. Omit “which was.” “tabernacle” is here the interior (the covered portion) of the temple.”
1 more voice on this verseWhat preachers and commentators have said about this verse, in their own words.
Ezekiel 41:1
“Ezekiel was himself a priest, but by the iniquity and calamity of the times was cut short of his birthright privilege of ministering in the temple; but God makes up the loss to him by introducing him into this prophetical, evangelical, celestial temple, and employing him to transmit a description of it to the church, in which he was dignified above all the rest of his order.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
forty cubits: Adam Clarke observes that these figures match Solomon's temple, whose holy place was forty cubits by twenty (1 Kings 6:2, 17). The vision keeps the old plan. The house the glory left in chapters 10 and 11 is restored to its first proportions before the glory returns in chapter 43.
Ezekiel 41:2
“The breadth of the door - This was the door, or gate, of the sanctuary, (see gates 3, in the plan), and this doorway was filled up with folding gates. The measurements are exactly the same as those of Solomon’s temple. See 1Ki 6:2, 1Ki 6:17.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
he went into the inner sanctuary: Until now the guide has brought Ezekiel with him, but here he goes in alone. Albert Barnes explains: the Most Holy Place was closed to an ordinary priest and entered only by the high priest once a year (Leviticus 16). Ezekiel, a priest himself, waits at the door.
Ezekiel 41:3
“Went he inward - Toward the holy of holies. It is not said, “he brought me in,” but “he went in,” because the holy of holies was not to be entered even by a priest like Ezekiel, but only by the high priest once a year. So the “angel” enters and announces: the measurements. The post of the door - On either side of the entrance was a pillar, the two together making up two cubits.”
The room is a square of twenty cubits, the same size as Solomon's inner sanctuary, which Clarke takes as proof both temples share one plan. Matthew Henry links the square to the New Jerusalem, laid out as a square in Revelation 21:16. He reads the shape as stability.
Ezekiel 41:4
“The length thereof, twenty cubits - This is the measurement of the sanctuary, or holy of holies. See G in the plan. This also was the exact measurement of Solomon’s temple, see 1Ki 6:20. This, and the other resemblances here, sufficiently prove that Ezekiel’s temple and that of Solomon were on the same plan; and that the latter temple was intended to be an exact resemblance of the former.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Ezekiel 41:5-11
the wall of the temple: is six cubits thick. Side rooms ring it in three levels of thirty rooms each, widening at each level because the wall narrows as it rises. Ledges carry the rooms, “so that the supports would not be fastened into the wall of the temple itself”.
Ezekiel 41:5
“The wall of the house - This was the outer wall of the temple itself. Its thickness of six cubits corresponds with the colossal proportions of the architecture of the east. Every side chamber - the side-chambers (D). These were a marked feature in Solomon’s Temple, and were probably used as storehouses for the furniture and property of the temple. The arrangement of these side-chambers differed in some respects from that of Solomon’s Temple, the object of Ezekiel’s vision being throughout to bring all things to a more exact proportion.”
three levels of thirty rooms each: The ninety rooms follow the side rooms that ringed Solomon's temple (1 Kings 6:5). John Gill and Adam Clarke cite Josephus, who gives the same count of thirty rooms on each of three floors. No beam is set into the temple wall.
Ezekiel 41:6
“And the side chambers were three, one over another, and thirty in order,.... There were three stories of them, and thirty in every storey, in all ninety; there were such chambers round about Solomon's temple, and so many stories of them, though their number is not expressed, 1Ki 6:5, but Josephus (z) says they were thirty, and one above another, three stories of them, as here. Some think twelve were on the north side, twelve on the south, and six on the west; or fifteen on the north, and fifteen on the south.”
2 more voices on this verse
Ezekiel 41:6
“The side chambers were three - We find by Joseph. Antiq. 8:3, 2, that round Solomon’s temple were chambers three stories high, each story consisting of thirty chambers. It is supposed that twelve were placed to the north of the temple, twelve to the south, and six to the east. Entered into the wall - The beams were admitted into the outer wall, but they rested on projections of the inner wall.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Ezekiel 41:6
"They entered," namely, the beams of the chambers, which were three-storied and thirty in consecutive order, entered into the wall, that is, were made to lean on rests projecting from the wall.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
widened at each successive level: Albert Barnes explains the widening: the supporting wall grew thinner by one cubit at each floor, and the rooms gained that cubit. The building steps inward as it rises. Jerome read the stairway through the middle story as a spiral stair leading to the upper rooms.
Ezekiel 41:7
“An enlarging - The “wall for the side-chambers” had for the ground story its full thickness of five cubits Eze 41:9 - then it was diminished one cubit, so as to form a ledge whereon to rest the beams of the floor of the second story, and again was further diminished one cubit for the floor of the third story. Thus there was an “enlarging” of the second story of the chambers by one cubit, and of the third story by two cubits beyond the breadth of the chambers on the ground-floor.”
a raised base all around it: The whole house stands on a platform a full rod of six cubits high, so the temple sits above the courts around it. Albert Barnes relates it to the side rooms. Worshipers in chapter 40 climbed steps at each gate, and the house stands higher still.
Ezekiel 41:8
“The foundations of the side chambers - Therefore the height of the side-chambers from the floor was six cubits there being three stories, which corresponds sufficiently with the twenty cubits which was the height of the temple. “A great cubit” is probably an architectural term to denote the line of junction between two stories, which would be that of the ceiling of the lower and the floor of the upper story.”
five cubits thick: The side rooms have their own outer wall, five cubits thick, so the house is enclosed in two layers of masonry. The sentence continues into verse 10. There the open area beyond this wall is given as twenty cubits, a clear space kept on every side of the temple.
Ezekiel 41:9
“And that which was left - i. e., the passage (F) between the side-chambers and the temple-wall, was five cubits Eze 41:11. The place of the side chambers that were within - Within the side-chambers which belong to the house. The seer is giving first the height of the side-chambers Eze 41:8, and then the breadth, from the outside of the wall of these chambers to the temple-wall.”
1 more voice on this verse
Ezekiel 41:9
“The thickness of the wall - See LLL in the plan. The place of the side chambers - A walk, or gallery of communication along the chambers, five cubits broad, Eze 41:11.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
twenty cubits wide all around the temple: John Gill notes a different Hebrew word is used here, so the twenty cubits lie between the side rooms and the chambers in the court. The gap is open ground. Ezekiel 43:8 later names the old fault of royal buildings set wall to wall with the sanctuary.
Ezekiel 41:10
“And between the chambers was the wideness of twenty cubits,.... Not the side chambers before mentioned, as if there was the space of twenty cubits between each chamber; for another word is used; more probably the meaning is, that between the side chambers, or the void space before them of five cubits, and the chambers which were in the court facing them, was such a wideness of twenty cubits: round about the house on every side; on all sides of the temple, where the above chambers were, west, north, and south.”
one entrance on the north and another on the south: The side rooms open only to the north and south, into the free space around the house. The east front is left to the temple's own entrance, which faces the gate where the glory returns in 43:4. The five cubits keep the way to those entrances clear.
Ezekiel 41:11
“The doors of the side-chambers opened on to the passage or corridor, between the chambers and the temple-wall.”
The building westward and the carved cherubim and palms
Ezekiel 41:12-17
building that faced the temple courtyard: The temple and the building each come to a hundred cubits, whole numbers in place of the odd fractions a real building usually carries. Beveled windows, galleries in three levels, and walls overlaid with wood on all sides are recorded as an eyewitness would report them.
Ezekiel 41:12
“The length thereof ninety cubits - The temple, with the buildings which surrounded it, was eighty-one cubits long; add ten cubits for the vestibule, or five for the breadth of the separate place, and five for its wall; in all, ninety cubits. See the plan, LHIL. By the separate place I suppose the temple itself is meant.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
Ezekiel 41:12
“Now the building that was before the separate place,.... The "separate place" is the holy of holies, which was separated by a vail under the second temple, and by a wall as in this, and the first from the holy place: "before or over against" which was a building, as it is rendered, Eze 41:15, a new building, not before taken notice of: and it was situated at the end toward the west: or "sea" (e), the Mediterranean sea, which lay west to the land of Canaan.”
a hundred cubits long: The house measures a hundred cubits from end to end, and Adam Clarke adds up its parts to reach that total. Chapter 40 gave the same figure for the inner court (40:47). The repeated round number ties the building and its courts into one planned square.
Ezekiel 41:13
“So he measured the house - The temple, taken from the wall which encompassed it from the western side to the vestibule, was one hundred and one cubits; five for the separate place, nine for the wall and the chambers attached to the temple, sixty for the sanctuary and the holy place, ten for the vestibule, and twelve for the two great walls on the west and east of the temple; in all, one hundred and one cubits, See the plan, GHI.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
on the east: The width across the east front also comes to a hundred cubits, so the temple and its separate yard form a square. Albert Barnes notes it was measured from the east. The western side, behind the building, was closed to anyone taking measurements.
Ezekiel 41:14
“Toward the east - The separate place was measured on its eastern side, for the western was not approachable for the purpose of measurement.”
at the rear of the temple: The building west of the temple also measures a hundred cubits, the third time this round number appears in three verses. Albert Barnes reads its galleries as covering an approach by which refuse was carried out. Even the service yard behind the sanctuary is planned.
Ezekiel 41:15
“The description of certain details is introduced by a summary statement of what had been already done. Galleries - On either side of the eastern front of the building on the separate place was a gallery of ten feet, under which was an approach to the building, by which the refuse was to be carried in by openings in the north and south, and then carried out by a western postern.”
overlaid with wood on all sides: Albert Barnes links the wood paneling to Solomon's temple, where cedar lined the walls so that no stone showed (1 Kings 6:15, 18). The windows are narrow and covered. Inside, the rooms are lit sparingly, and the carved wood of verses 17 to 20 fills the view.
Ezekiel 41:16
“Galleries - The upper story of the side-chambers was probably built in the form of an open gallery. Over against the door - The rows of the side-chambers extended to the front of the temple, so that they were “over against” the opening, but did not extend so far as the porch. Cieled - Overlaid. Pillars, galleries, narrow windows were overlaid with wood 1Ki 6:15-16. Were covered - With wood.”
spaced evenly around the inner and outer sanctuary: This verse opens a sentence that ends in verses 18 to 20 with carved cherubim and palm trees. The decoration is measured and evenly spaced, the same order the reed has laid on every wall. The carving reaches above the inner door.
Ezekiel 41:18-20
alternating carved cherubim and palm trees: Carved cherubim and palm trees alternate on every wall, and each cherub has two faces, a man's and a young lion's. Solomon's temple carried the same pairing (1 Kings 6:29). A guardian creature beside a living tree recalls the Eden language this book used at chapter 28.
Ezekiel 41:18
“A palm tree was between a cherub and a cherub - That is, the palm trees and the cherubs were alternated; and each cherub had two faces, one of a lion and the other of a man; one of which was turned to the palm tree on the right, the other to the palm tree on the left.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
Ezekiel 41:18
“Cherubim - Generally taken for the portrait of angels, or young men with wings: yet is the description of them very different in different places; in Ezekiel's vision, chap. i, 5-14; x, 14, Isaiah's vision, Isaiah vi, 2, John's vision, Rev. iv, 6-8, and in Solomon's temple, 1 Kings vi, 23-26.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
the face of a young lion: Each carved cherub shows two faces, a man's and a young lion's, while the living creatures of chapter 1 had four (1:10). A carving on a flat wall shows two sides. The two faces look toward the palm trees on either hand, so the pattern repeats around the whole house.
Ezekiel 41:19
“These seem to represent the angels, who have more than the wisdom of a man and the courage of a lion; and in both they have an eye to the palms of victory and triumph which are set before them, and which they are sure of in all their conflicts with the powers of darkness. And in the assemblies of the saints angels are in a special manner present, 1 Cor. xi.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
from the floor to the space above the entrance: Adam Clarke sets the carvings as high as the doorway, with the windows above them. Solomon's walls carried the same cherubim and palm trees, with open flowers added (1 Kings 6:29). Ezekiel names only the cherubim and palms.
Ezekiel 41:20
“From the ground unto above the door - The temple was thirty cubits high, 1Ki 6:2, the gate was fourteen cubits, chap. Eze 40:48. The palm trees and the cherubim were the same height as the gate or door. The windows were above the door.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
The wooden altar and the doors of the temple
Ezekiel 41:21-26
had a rectangular doorframe: The outer sanctuary has a rectangular doorframe. Inside stands an altar of wood, named as the Most Holy Place was named: “This is the table that is before the LORD”. Commentators connect the naming to the tabernacle's table (Exodus 25:23-30), an altar described in the vocabulary of a table.
Ezekiel 41:21
“The posts - Not the word used before (see Eze 40:9 note). These “posts” are rather pilasters forming part of the inner walls. The appearance ... other - i. e., the appearance in this vision was the same as in the actual temple (compare Eze 43:3); (or, according to others, the front of the sanctuary resembled, the front of the holy place).”
1 more voice on this verse
Ezekiel 41:21
“The posts of the temple were squared,.... Or, were "foursquare" (n); the two posts on each side the door, the lintel and the threshold, made a square; the posts themselves were not round, as pillars, but flat and square; and the upper part was not arched, as in some buildings, but square. Jarchi says he had heard that the posts of Solomon's temple were foursquare; but that is not certain; however, these were.”
Albert Barnes and John Gill identify it as the altar of incense. Jamieson, Fausset & Brown call it a table because the Lord takes delight in His people there, as at a feast. Barnes adds that table and altar are used for each other in Malachi 1:7.
Ezekiel 41:22
“The altar of wood was three cubits high, and the length thereof two cubits,.... This was the altar of incense, and was typical of Christ in his intercession and mediation.”
2 more voices on this verse
Ezekiel 41:22
“At it, not at the table of showbread, the priests daily ministered. It stood in front of the veil, and is therefore said to be "before the Lord." It is called a table, as being that at which the Lord will take delight in His people, as at a feast. Hence its dimensions are larger than that of old--three cubits high, two broad, instead of two and one.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Ezekiel 41:22
“The altar of wood - The altar for incense (marginal reference); “altar of gold” (see 1Ki 7:48). Walls - The corner pieces of the altar, rising into projections called in Exodus horns, here corners. Table - “table and altar” were convertible terms Mal 1:7.”
double doors: John Gill counts one door for each room, the outer sanctuary and the Most Holy Place, making two doors in all. He notes the outer door is ten cubits wide and the inner only six (41:2, 41:3). The way narrows as it nears God.
Ezekiel 41:23
“And the temple and the sanctuary had two doors. Or the house of propitiatory, as the Targum; that is, the most holy place; not two doors apiece, but each had one door, which made two; the door of the temple was ten cubits broad, and the door of the most holy place six cubits, Eze 41:2 showing the door is wider, and more enter into the outward visible church, or less perfect state, even some bad, as well as good, than the door of the Jerusalem church state, or heavenly glory, into which fewer enter.”
1 more voice on this verse
Ezekiel 41:23
“There is so much difference both in the terms and in the rules of architecture between one age and another, one place and another, that it ought not to be any stumbling-block to us that there is so much in these descriptions dark and hard to be understood, about the meaning of which the learned are not agreed.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
two swinging panels: Jerome describes each door as two leaves that fold into each other, so a wide opening could be closed in narrower sections. Solomon's doors were made the same way (1 Kings 6:34). Matthew Henry grants that ancient building terms are often obscure and the learned disagree on them.
a wooden canopy outside: Jerome notes that the cherubim and palms of the walls continue onto the doors, so the whole approach carries one design. Adam Clarke reasons that the wood had to be thick, since the figures were carved in relief. The canopy shelters the portico front.
Ezekiel 41:25
“There were thick planks - The wood, or planks, were thick and strong; for the cherubim and palm trees were carved in relief out of their substance, and unless they had been of considerable thickness, this could not have been done.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
beveled windows and palm trees: The palm trees reach the portico walls, so the tree appears at every stage from the porch to the inner room. The chapter ends with small details. Matthew Henry counsels patience with such terms, because the rules of building differ from age to age and the learned are not agreed.
Ezekiel 41:26
“And there were narrow windows,.... See Eze 41:16, and palm trees on the one side and on the other side, on the sides of the porch; upon the posts that were on each side the porch, north and south; Eze 40:16, and upon the side chambers of the house, and thick planks; that is, there were palm trees upon the side chambers, which were in number thirty, Eze 41:6 and upon the planks also; every part of this fabric within and without were ornamented.”
Keep studying
Sources for this chapter
The summary
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.
The exposition
Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible; Albert Barnes, Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments (1832-1869); Carl Friedrich Keil, Biblical Commentary on the Prophecies of Ezekiel; Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible; Jerome, Commentary on Ezekiel; John Gill; Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible and Patrick Fairbairn, An Exposition of Ezekiel.