Outside the Temple

The man measures the temple wall and the side rooms that wrap around the building in three successive tiers. Their supports rest on ledges rather than being driven into the temple wall, and the rooms widen as the structure rises. Ezekiel also notes the raised base and the open area surrounding these side rooms, including entrances on the north and south.

N⁵ext he measured the wall of the temple to be six cubits thick, and the width of each side room around the temple was four cubits. ⁶The side rooms were arranged one above another in three levels of thirty rooms each. There were ledges all around the wall of the temple to serve as supports for the side rooms, so that the supports would not be fastened into the wall of the temple itself. ⁷The side rooms surrounding the temple widened at each successive level, because the structure surrounding the temple ascended by stages corresponding to the narrowing of the temple wall as it rose upward. And so a stairway went up from the lowest story to the highest, through the middle one. ⁸I saw that the temple had a raised base all around it, forming the foundation of the side rooms. It was the full length of a rod, six long cubits. ⁹The outer wall of the side rooms was five cubits thick, and the open area between the side rooms of the temple ¹⁰and the outer chambers was twenty cubits wide all around the temple. ¹¹The side rooms opened into this area, with one entrance on the north and another on the south. The open area was five cubits wide all around.

The guide then measures the large western building and its wall, along with the total temple length and the temple courtyard's dimensions. Both the temple complex and the eastward frontage come out to one hundred cubits, underscoring the balanced scale of the whole sanctuary precinct.

¹²Now the building that faced the temple courtyard on the west was seventy cubits wide, and the wall of the building was five cubits thick all around, with a length of ninety cubits. ¹³Then he measured the temple to be a hundred cubits long, and the temple courtyard and the building with its walls were also a hundred cubits long. ¹⁴The width of the temple courtyard on the east, including the front of the temple, was a hundred cubits.