What Does Ezekiel 41:8 Mean?

(8) **I saw also the height of the house.—**This does not mean the height of the house itself, which is nowhere stated. The words are, literally, *I saw for the house a height *(*i.e.,* an elevation) *round about,* and the meaning of this is explained in what follows. The Temple, as has been already said (Ezekiel 40:49), was entered by a flight of steps leading up to the porch, and was therefore on a higher level than the court. We are now told that the side chambers had a foundation of six cubits. Whether this “foundation” of the Temple and the side chambers was built of masonry, or, as is more probable, was a sort of basement to contain cisterns and storage rooms, we are not told; but it probably extended, under the name of “the place that was left” (Ezekiel 41:9; Ezekiel 41:11), five cubits beyond the outer wall of the chambers, forming a platform from which they were entered. **Six great cubits.**—Literally, *six cubits to the joint,* or *to the armpit,* for the word has both significations. It is plain that a cubit of a different length, measured to the armpit, cannot be intended, both because no such cubit is known to have been in use at any time, and because Ezekiel in Ezekiel 40:5 has already fixed the length of the cubit he uses. The sense of *joint* is therefore to be taken, and this applied architecturally can only mean the point at which one part of the building joins another; here, the point where the superstructure meets the foundation, or, as we should say, “six cubits to the water-table.”