Bible Strands
Ezekiel 42:3
Gallery faced gallery in three levels opposite the twenty cubits that belonged to the inner court and opposite the pavement that belonged to the outer court.
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — The prophet Ezekiel records a divine vision of the temple’s architecture, received during his exile in Babylon. The vision details the precise layout of the inner chambers and courts.
The words — נֶגֶד (Ne.ged) translates literally as "before" or "opposite," and רִצְפָה (ritz.Fah) means "pavement." These terms anchor the description in physical alignment and prepared ground.
The thread — The text’s spatial measurements echo Ezekiel 41:15, which notes the building’s length facing the rear temple courtyard, and Ezekiel 41:10, which defines the twenty-cubit space between the outer chambers. The pavement motif reappears in 2 Chronicles 7:3 as the site of Israelite reverence.
Why it lands — The verse demands attention to exact boundaries and orderly arrangement within sacred space. It requires the reader to track architectural precision rather than assume symbolic abstraction.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
Over against the twenty cubits which were for the inner court, and over against the pavement which was for the utter court, was gallery against gallery in three stories.
Cross-references
- Ezekiel 41:15 Next he measured the length of the building facing the temple courtyard at the rear of the temple, including its galleries on each side; it was a hundred cubits. The outer sanctuary, the inner sanctuary, and the porticoes facing the court,
- Ezekiel 41:10 and the outer chambers was twenty cubits wide all around the temple.
- 2 Chronicles 7:3 When all the Israelites saw the fire coming down and the glory of the LORD above the temple, they bowed down on the pavement with their faces to the ground, and they worshiped and gave thanks to the LORD: “For He is good; His loving devotion endures forever.”
- Song of Solomon 1:17 The beams of our house are cedars; our rafters are fragrant firs.
- Song of Solomon 7:5 Your head crowns you like Mount Carmel, the hair of your head like purple threads; the king is captured in your tresses.
- Ezekiel 40:17 Then he brought me into the outer court, and there were chambers and a pavement laid out all around the court. Thirty chambers faced the pavement,
- Ezekiel 42:5 Now the upper chambers were smaller because the galleries took more space from the chambers on the lower and middle floors of the building.