Ezekiel 40:17-19

Ezekiel 40:17. And he brought me to the outer court, and lo, there were rooms and a pavement made for the court round about; thirty rooms for the pavement.

Ezekiel 40:18. And the pavement was by the side of the gates, corresponding to the length of the gates; this is the lower pavement.

Ezekiel 40:19. And he measured the breadth from the front of the lower gate to the outer part of the inner court, an hundred cubits eastward and northward.

In this brief description of the outer court there is properly no difficulty in the terms, or any of the particular parts, but still there is an indefiniteness which would leave us at sea if we were going to draw out the plan. For what was the position of the thirty rooms or cells spoken of in this space? Did they appear immediately in front when one entered the east gate (as Hävernick contends), or were they placed at a side (as Böttcher and Hitzig affirm)? Did the measurement of an hundred cubits apply merely to the buildings, or to the court itself? Here, again, is room for difference of opinion. It is foolish for us to fix and determine what the prophet has left indeterminate. I think the natural impression is, that the prophet means to represent the whole outer court as laid with a smooth and polished pavement round and round as far as this court reached; that on the pavement, but to the north or right, as one entered, there was a large building of thirty rooms covering the whole width of the court in that direction (for why otherwise should he have given the measurement on the east and north merely, and yet have made it reach from the lower gate to the outer part of the inner court?); so that the measurement given indicated at once the extent of the buildings and the width of the court. (Hävernick disputes this, but without any just reason; he would make the court larger.) Such is the impression I take up from the description, but there can be no absolute certainty in regard to the relative positions and adjustments itself a proof that nothing depends on them. The determinate things in the description are, that the compass of the outer court was exactly defined, an hundred cubits; that it was finely paved, as a place which should be trodden only by clean feet (emblem of internal purity); and that the erections belonging to it were to be a square of an hundred cubits, and consisting of thirty apartments. So that here also nothing was left to men's caprice or corrupt fancies, as had been the case of old. While from the first there appears to have been an outer court connected with Solomon's temple, it seems to have been left to a certain extent open to alterations, as well as the intrusion of idolatrous inventions; hence we read in 2 Chronicles 20:5 of “a new court,” and in 2 Kings 23:11-12 of the profanation of the place by some of the worst things of heathenish idolatry being set up there, for which, no doubt, the innovators would plead the absence of any express statutes deter mining what should or should not belong to it. Now, however, there should be no room for such displays of human arbitrariness and corruption; a more perfect state of things was to be brought in, and even all in the outer court was to be regulated by God's hand, and bear the impress of his holiness. This too must be hallowed ground, fashioned and ruled in all its parts after the perfect measures of the Divine mind and the just requirements of his service; therefore such was evidently the practical result aimed at let not the ungodly and profane any longer presume to tread such courts (Isaiah 1:12), or desecrate them by the introduction of their own unwarranted inventions. Let all feel that in coming here they have to do with a God of purer eyes than to behold iniquity.