What Does Ezekiel 42:9 Mean?

(9) **From under these chambers.—**This verse as it stands in our version is scarcely intelligible. Translate: *And from underneath it* (*i.e.*, the wall just spoken of) *these chambers.* The wall screened the lower part of the chambers so that to one looking from the east they appeared to rise out of it. Then a new clause begins: “The entrance was from the east, as one goeth to them from the outer court.” It is perfectly clear that this does not refer to any entrance from the inner court, because it expressly says “as one goeth from the outer court.” The object of the statement is probably to show that the access to the chambers was from the outer court by means of the walk already described, leading from the east, from the porch of the gate to the inner court. Ezekiel 42:10-12 describe briefly another chamber-building at the south of the “separate place,” exactly like the one already described at the north. There is only need to notice some required changes in the translation. Thus read Ezekiel 42:10, *On the breadth of the wall of the court going toward the east, over against the separate place and over against the building were the chambers.* The *wall* is here the same word as in Ezekiel 42:7, and means therefore not the wall of a building, but a fence-wall; it is here defined, however, as “the wall of the court,” and must be understood of the division wall between the inner and outer courts. Along this, as it stretched to the east, the building was situated. Some writers, by a slight alteration of the text, would change *east* into *south,* so that for “going toward the east” we should read *on the south.* This makes the sense clearer, but is not necessary.