The separate place - See F, Plan II. The word occurs only in this chapter. The name, which seems one of discredit, has led to the conjecture that the purpose of this place and its building was to receive the offal of the sacrifices and sweepings of the courts, to be carried thence by a postern gate (compare Ezekiel 43:21). The building itself was, we are told, seventy cubits wide, with walls five cubits thick (eighty cubits in all), leaving ten cubits on each side to make up the 100 cubits from north to south. The length was ninety cubits, which, adding as before the thickness of the walls, gives 100 cubits in length. The whole temple-building was 500 cubits from west to east, and from north to south, 500 cubits.

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.

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, Ezekiel 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. The meaning is, that this building was to the west of the temple, at which end stood the holy of holies, and this near to that: what building is here meant is not easy to say, there being nothing in the first or second temple which answered to it: it seems to be a new building; and what the mystical sense of it is cannot be easily guessed at. Cocceius thinks, that as the holy of holies signifies the heavenly or more perfect state of the church on earth, this, being over against it, or behind it, as in Ezekiel 41:15, may design heaven itself, the happiness and glory of the saints treasured up and reserved there:

it was seventy cubits broad; Jerom seems to have the same mystical sense in view; since he observes, that after labours and perils, and the floods and shipwrecks of this world for seventy years, we come to enjoy the eternal rest:

and the wall of the building was five cubits thick round about; which may answer to the vast gulf fixed between the godly in heaven, and the wicked in hell; so that there is no going the one to the other, Luke 16:26,

and the length thereof ninety cubits; there are no outgoings to this building, as Hafenrefferus (f), a German divine, observes; so that those that are brought into it shall ever remain in it, which is the case of the saints in heaven.

(e) "ad mare, Piscator; obversa mari", Cocceius, Starckius. (f) Apud Starckius in loc.

The Separate Place, and the External Dimensions of the Temple

Ezekiel 41:12. And the building at the front of the separate place was seventy cubits broad on the side turned toward the west, and the wall of the building five cubits broad round about, and its length ninety cubits. Ezekiel 41:13. And he measured the (temple) house: the length a hundred cubits; and the separate place, and its building, and its walls: the length a hundred cubits. Ezekiel 41:14. And the breadth of the face of the (temple) house, and of the separate place toward the east, a hundred cubits. - The explanation of these verses depends upon the meaning of the word גּזרה. According to its derivation from גּזר, to cut, to separate, גּזרה means that which is cut off, or separated. Thus ארץ גּזרה is the land cut off, the desert, which is not connected by roads with the inhabited country. In the passage before us, גּזרה signifies a place on the western side of the temple, i.e., behind the temple, which was separated from the sanctuary (Plate I J), and on which a building stood, but concerning the purpose of which nothing more definite is stated than we are able to gather, partly from the name and situation of the place in question, and partly from such passages as 1 Chronicles 26:18 and 2 Kings 23:11, according to which, even in Solomon's temple, there was a similar space at the back of the temple house with buildings upon it, which had a separate way out, the gate שׁלּכת, namely, that "this space,with its buildings, was to be used for the reception of all refuse, sweepings, all kinds of rubbish, - in brief, of everything that was separated or rejected when the holy service was performed in the temple, - and that this was the reason why it received the name of the separate place" (Kliefoth). The building upon this space was situated אל־פּני־הגּזרה, in the front of the gizrah (that is to say, as one approached it from the temple); and that פּאת דּרך־היּם, on the side of the way to the sea, i.e., on the western side, sc. of the temple, and had a breadth of seventy cubits (from north to south), with a wall round about, which was five cubits broad (thick), and a length of ninety cubits. As the thickness of the wall is specially mentioned in connection with the breadth, we must add it both to the breadth and to the length of the building as given here; so that, when looked at from the outside, the building was eighty cubits broad and a hundred cubits long. In Ezekiel 41:13 this length is expressly attributed to the separate place, and (i.e., along with) its building, and the walls thereof. But the length of the temple house has also been previously stated as a hundred cubits. In Ezekiel 41:14 the breadth of both is also stated to have been a hundred cubits - namely, the breadth of the outer front, or front face of the temple, was a hundred cubits; and the breadth of the separate place לקּדים toward the east, i.e., the breadth which it showed to the person measuring on the eastern side, was the same. If, them, the building on the separate place was only eighty cubits broad, according to Ezekiel 41:12, including the walls, whilst the separate place itself was a hundred cubits broad, there remains a space of twenty cubits in breadth not covered by the building; that is to say, as we need not hesitate to put the building in the centre, open spaces of ten cubits each on the northern and southern sides were left as approaches to the building on both sides (K), whereas the entire length of the separate place (from east to west) was covered by the building. - All these measurements are in perfect harmony. As the inner court formed a square of a hundred cubits in length (Ezekiel 40:47), the temple house, which joined it on the west, extended with its appurtenances to a similar length; and the separate place behind the temple also covered a space of equal size. These three squares, therefore, had a length from east to west of three hundred cubits. If we add to this the length of the buildings of the east gates of the inner and outer courts, namely fifty cubits for each (Ezekiel 40:15, Ezekiel 40:21, Ezekiel 40:25, Ezekiel 40:29, Ezekiel 40:33, Ezekiel 40:36), and the length of the outer court from gate to gate a hundred cubits (Ezekiel 40:19, Ezekiel 40:23, Ezekiel 40:27), we obtain for the whole of the temple building the length of five hundred cubits. If, again, we add to the breadth of the inner court or temple house, which was one hundred cubits, the breadths of the outer court, with the outer and inner gate-buildings, viz., two hundred cubits on both the north and south sides, we obtain a total breadth of 100 + 200 + 200 equals 500 (say five hundred) cubits; so that the whole building covered a space of five hundred cubits square, in harmony with the calculation already made (at Ezekiel 40:24-27) of the size of the surrounding wall.

Now the building that was before the separate place at the end toward the west was seventy cubits broad; and the wall of the building was five cubits thick round about, and the length thereof ninety cubits.

41:12 The building - This is a new building not yet mentioned, but now measured by itself.

12-15. Sum of the measures of the temple, and of the buildings behind and on the side of it.

41:1-26 After the prophet had observed the courts, he was brought to the temple. If we attend to instructions in the plainer parts of religion, and profit by them, we shall be led further into an acquaintance with the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven.