Then he brought me to the nave and measured the jambs. On each side six cubits was the breadth of the jambs. 2 And the breadth of the entrance was ten cubits, and the side walls of the entrance were five cubits on either side. And he measured the length of the nave, forty cubits, and its breadth, twenty cubits. 3 Then he went into the inner room and measured the jambs of the entrance, two cubits; and the entrance, six cubits; and the side walls on either side of the entrance, seven cubits. 4 And he measured the length of the room, twenty cubits, and its breadth, twenty cubits, across the nave. And he said to me, “This is the Most Holy Place.”
5 Then he measured the wall of the temple, six cubits thick, and the breadth of the side chambers, four cubits, all round the temple. 6 And the side chambers were in three storeys, one over another, thirty in each storey. There were offsets all round the wall of the temple to serve as supports for the side chambers, so that they should not be supported by the wall of the temple. 7 And it became broader as it wound upwards to the side chambers, because the temple was enclosed upwards all round the temple. Thus the temple had a broad area upwards, and so one went up from the lowest storey to the top storey through the middle storey. 8 I saw also that the temple had a raised platform all round; the foundations of the side chambers measured a full reed of six long cubits. 9 The thickness of the outer wall of the side chambers was five cubits. The free space between the side chambers of the temple and the 10 other chambers was a breadth of twenty cubits all round the temple on every side. 11 And the doors of the side chambers opened on the free space, one door towards the north, and another door towards the south. And the breadth of the free space was five cubits all round.
12 The building that was facing the separate yard on the west side was seventy cubits broad, and the wall of the building was five cubits thick all round, and its length ninety cubits.
13 Then he measured the temple, a hundred cubits long; and the yard and the building with its walls, a hundred cubits long; 14 also the breadth of the east front of the temple and the yard, a hundred cubits.
15 Then he measured the length of the building facing the yard that was at the back and its galleries on either side, a hundred cubits.
The inside of the nave and the vestibules of the court, 16 the thresholds and the narrow windows and the galleries all round the three of them, opposite the threshold, were panelled with wood all round, from the floor up to the windows (now the windows were covered), 17 to the space above the door, even to the inner room, and on the outside. And on all the walls all round, inside and outside, was a measured pattern. 18 It was carved of cherubim and palm trees, a palm tree between cherub and cherub. Every cherub had two faces: 19 a human face towards the palm tree on one side, and the face of a young lion towards the palm tree on the other side. They were carved on the whole temple all round. 20 From the floor to above the door, cherubim and palm trees were carved; similarly the wall of the nave.
21 The doorposts of the nave were squared, and in front of the Holy Place was something resembling 22 an altar of wood, three cubits high, two cubits long, and two cubits broad. Its corners, its base, and its walls were of wood. He said to me, “This is the table that is before the Lord.” 23 The nave and the Holy Place had each a double door. 24 The double doors had two leaves apiece, two swinging leaves for each door. 25 And on the doors of the nave were carved cherubim and palm trees, such as were carved on the walls. And there was a canopy of wood in front of the vestibule outside. 26 And there were narrow windows and palm trees on either side, on the side walls of the vestibule, the side chambers of the temple, and the canopies.
Two other interpretations may be mentioned. One is the dispensational view, according to which what Ezekiel writes here is literal, but has an entirely future reference, speaking of the glorious future that God has for Israel as a nation after His dealings with His Church are over. We have spent a good deal of time in these Notes and elsewhere pointing out the error of this idea, which destroys a truly biblical emphasis, putting the cart before the horse and making Israel, the people of God, of more importance than the Church of Jesus Christ, an attitude which, from the New Testament point of view, is quite unthinkable. For the reasons we gave in our study of chs 36, 37, we reject this view. A fourth interpretation is that what Ezekiel gives us here is not so much prophecy as apocalypse, and that this is a pattern for the messianic age to come, which lay in the future, yet grew out of the present. If this be the right way to look at the passage, we can gather some general lessons from it. One is that this 'diagram' of a completely symmetrical temple speaks to us of the perfection of God's plan for His restored people, and that that perfection is symbolically expressed in the immaculate symmetry of the building. What Ezekiel is saying is that God's plan is perfect in every respect, and this statement is a timeless and permanently valid one in all situations. It should be an enormous encouragement to anyone who reads it - as indeed it must have been to the exiles by the river Chebar - to have such an assurance that God's blueprint for our future is perfected in every detail. For the exiles that 'future' was not to unfold for many years, yet God was assuring them thus early that His plans for them were even then laid down and settled.