41 Afterward he brought me into the nave, the large main room of the Temple, and measured the pillars that formed its doorway. They were 10½ feet square. 2 The entrance hall was 17½ feet wide and 8¾ feet deep. The nave itself was 70 feet long by 35 feet.
3 Then he went into the inner room at the end of the nave and measured the columns at the entrance and found them to be 3½ feet thick; its doorway was 10½ feet wide, with a hallway 12¼ feet deep behind it. 4 The inner room was 35 feet square. “This,” he told me, “is the Most Holy Place.”
5 Then he measured the wall of the Temple and found that it was 10½ feet thick, with a row of rooms along the outside. Each room was 7 feet wide. 6 These rooms were in three tiers, one above the other, with thirty rooms in each tier. The whole structure was supported by girders and not attached to the Temple wall for support. 7 Each tier was wider than the one below it, corresponding to the narrowing of the Temple wall as it rose higher. A stairway at the side of the Temple led up from floor to floor.
8 I noticed that the Temple was built on a terrace and that the bottom row of rooms extended out 10½ feet onto the terrace. 9 The outer wall of these rooms was 8¾ feet thick, leaving a free space of 8¾ feet out to the edge of the terrace, the same on both sides.
10 Thirty-five feet away from the terrace, on both sides of the Temple, was another row of rooms down in the inner court. 11 Two doors opened from the tiers of rooms to the terrace yard, which was 8¾ feet wide; one door faced north and the other south.
12 A large building stood on the west, facing the Temple yard, measuring 122½ feet wide by 157½ feet long. Its walls were 8¾ feet thick. 13 Then he measured the Temple and its immediately surrounding yards. The area was 175 feet square. 14 The inner court at the east of the Temple was also 175 feet wide, 15-16 and so was the building west of the Temple, including its two walls.
The nave of the Temple and the Holy of Holies and the entry hall were paneled, and all three had recessed windows. The inner walls of the Temple were paneled with wood above and below the windows. 17-18 The space above the door leading into the Holy of Holies was also paneled. The walls were decorated with carvings of Guardian Angels, each with two faces, and of palm trees alternating with the Guardian Angels. 19-20 One face—that of a man—looked toward the palm tree on one side, and the other face—that of a young lion—looked toward the palm tree on the other side. And so it was, all around the inner wall of the Temple.
21 There were square doorposts at the doors of the nave, and in front of the Holy of Holies was what appeared to be an altar, but it was made of wood. 22 This altar was 3½ feet square and 5¼ feet high; its corners, base, and sides were all of wood. “This,” he told me, “is the Table of the Lord.”
23 Both the nave and the Holy of Holies had double doors, 24 each with two swinging sections. 25 The doors leading into the nave were decorated with cherubim and palm trees, just as on the walls. And there was a wooden canopy over the entry hall. 26 There were recessed windows and carved palm trees on both sides of the entry hall, the hallways beside the Temple, and on the canopy over the entrance.
Footnotes
- Ezekiel 41:22
