Ezekiel 41 explained: Measuring the Temple's Inner Rooms

Main hall and holiest room (vv. 1-4)

The guide measures the main hall and then the innermost room, a perfect square of twenty cubits (about 10 metres) each way, which he names the Most Holy Place. These sizes match Solomon's earlier temple, and only the guide is said to go inside, which many readers take to mean Ezekiel stayed at the threshold.

Rooms wrapped around (vv. 5-11)

Three floors of small rooms, about thirty on each level, surround the building and rest on ledges so that no beams cut into the temple wall itself. As in Solomon's temple, this kept the holy building separate, and the rooms were probably for storage, though the chapter does not say.

Building at the back (vv. 12-15a)

A large building stands behind the temple on the west, and the whole layout works out to neat measures of a hundred cubits. The chapter never says what this building was for, and scholars are unsure.

Wood panels and carvings (vv. 15b-20)

The inner walls are lined with wood and carved with palm trees alternating with cherubim, winged guardian figures, each showing a human face and a lion's face. Solomon's temple had similar carvings, and many interpreters see palms and cherubim as echoing the garden of Eden, a picture of life near God restored.

The table and doors (vv. 21-26)

The only furniture described is a wooden altar the guide calls "the table that is before the LORD," likely the incense altar or the table for holy bread, though scholars disagree which. Folding double doors and more carvings finish the picture, while the ark, the sacred chest that once stood in the holiest room, is never mentioned.

Key verse: Ezekiel 41:4

Where Christians differ

Christians differ on whether this temple is a literal building still to come, an idealized picture of God living among his restored people, or something Christians read as fulfilled in Jesus and the church, recalling his words about the temple of his body.

Something to think about

What might it do for people who have lost something sacred to picture it rebuilt in such careful, measured detail?