Ezekiel 42:5

5 The upper rooms themselves were narrower, their galleries being wider than on the first and second floors of the building.

Ezekiel 42:5 Meaning and Commentary

Ezekiel 42:5

Now the upper chambers were shorter
The chambers were in three stories, as in the following verse, one above another; the middlemost were shorter than the lowermost, and the upper shorter than either; just the reverse of the chambers in ( Ezekiel 41:7 ) , they were not so high from the floor to the ceiling, nor so broad from side to side. The reason follows: for the galleries were higher than these;
or, "ate out of these" ^F23, "than the lower, and than the middlemost of the building"; the meaning is, that the galleries or balconies in the middlemost and upper chambers were taken, out of them, and so made them lesser than the lower ones, and the upper ones lesser than either; or the posts or pillars, as the word may be rendered, see ( Ezekiel 42:3 ) , which supported the chambers, took more out of the uppermost than the others, and so made them shorter. This may signify the diversity of gifts and grace, of light and knowledge, and of liberty and comfort, in the churches; and that, as those that are uppermost have most light, they are usually the least, and fewest members in them; who are the few names in Sardis, ( Revelation 3:4 ) , and are generally more straitened, afflicted, reproached, and persecuted.

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FOOTNOTES:

F23 (hnhm wlkwy) Keri, (wlkay) "comedebant ex ipsis", Mariana; "demordebant ab illis", Cocceius, Starckius.

Ezekiel 42:5 In-Context

3 Across the thirty-five feet that separated the inside courtyard from the paved walkway at the edge of the outside courtyard, the rooms rose level by level for three stories.

4 In front of the rooms on the inside was a hallway seventeen and a half feet wide and one hundred seventy-five feet long. Its entrances were from the north.

5 The upper rooms themselves were narrower, their galleries being wider than on the first and second floors of the building.

6 The rooms on the third floor had no pillars like the pillars in the outside courtyard and were smaller than the rooms on the first and second floors.

7 There was an outside wall parallel to the rooms and the outside courtyard. It fronted the rooms for eighty-seven and a half feet.