The Babylonian Exile

Its portico faced the outer court, and its side pillars were decorated with palm trees on each side. Eight steps led up to it.

Then he brought me to the north gate and measured it. It had the same measurements as the others,

as did its gate chambers, side pillars, and portico. It also had windows all around. It was fifty cubits long and twenty-five cubits wide.

Its portico faced the outer court, and its side pillars were decorated with palm trees on each side. Eight steps led up to it.

There was a chamber with a doorway by the portico in each of the inner gateways. There the burnt offering was to be washed.

Inside the portico of the gateway were two tables on each side, on which the burnt offerings, sin offerings, and guilt offerings were to be slaughtered.

Outside, as one goes up to the entrance of the north gateway, there were two tables on one side and two more tables on the other side of the gate’s portico.

So there were four tables inside the gateway and four outside—eight tables in all—on which the sacrifices were to be slaughtered.

There were also four tables of dressed stone for the burnt offering, each a cubit and a half long, a cubit and a half wide, and a cubit high. On these were placed the utensils used to slaughter the burnt offerings and the other sacrifices.

The double-pronged hooks, each a handbreadth long, were fastened all around the inside of the room, and the flesh of the offering was to be placed on the tables.

Outside the inner gate, within the inner court, were two chambers, one beside the north gate and facing south, and another beside the south gate and facing north.

Then the man said to me: “The chamber that faces south is for the priests who keep charge of the temple,

and the chamber that faces north is for the priests who keep charge of the altar. These are the sons of Zadok, the only Levites who may approach the LORD to minister before Him.”

Next he measured the court. It was square, a hundred cubits long and a hundred cubits wide. And the altar was in front of the temple.

Then he brought me to the portico of the temple and measured the side pillars of the portico to be five cubits on each side. The width of the gateway was fourteen cubits and its sidewalls were three cubits on either side.

The portico was twenty cubits wide and twelve cubits deep, and ten steps led up to it. There were columns by the side pillars, one on each side.

Then the man brought me into the outer sanctuary and measured the side pillars to be six cubits wide on each side.

The width of the entrance was ten cubits, and the sides of the entrance were five cubits on each side. He also measured the length of the outer sanctuary to be forty cubits, and the width to be twenty cubits.

And he went into the inner sanctuary and measured the side pillars at the entrance to be two cubits wide. The entrance was six cubits wide, and the walls on each side were seven cubits wide.

Then he measured the room adjacent to the inner sanctuary to be twenty cubits long and twenty cubits wide. And he said to me, “This is the Most Holy Place.”

Next he measured the wall of the temple to be six cubits thick, and the width of each side room around the temple was four cubits.

The side rooms were arranged one above another in three levels of thirty rooms each. There were ledges all around the wall of the temple to serve as supports for the side rooms, so that the supports would not be fastened into the wall of the temple itself.

The side rooms surrounding the temple widened at each successive level, because the structure surrounding the temple ascended by stages corresponding to the narrowing of the temple wall as it rose upward. And so a stairway went up from the lowest story to the highest, through the middle one.

I saw that the temple had a raised base all around it, forming the foundation of the side rooms. It was the full length of a rod, six long cubits.

The outer wall of the side rooms was five cubits thick, and the open area between the side rooms of the temple