What Does Ezekiel 40:18 Mean?
And the paving beside the gates, stretching along their length, was the lower paving.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And the pavement by the side of the gates over against the length of the gates was the lower pavement.THE KEY
The gate’s “side” is its shoulder in Hebrew, so even the ground alongside the entrance is described in the body’s language.
THE MEANING
The verse specifies the pavement beside the gates and measures its run against their length; it calls this the lower pavement. The entrance includes the surface that borders it, placed within the larger arrangement.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A gate is only its opening, and the ground beside it is incidental. Here the pavement is measured in relation to the gates, so the bordering surface belongs to the design.
THE ROOT
כֶּתֶף
ketef
GROWS FROM
כתף
k-t-p
Shoulder; by extension, the side or flank.
The Hebrew word translated “side” is the ordinary word for “shoulder.” It gives the gate a bodily contour: the pavement runs beside the gate’s shoulder.
ALSO GROWS
kāṯēp̄: shoulder, the body’s upper side
כָּתֵף
This bodily sense is the source of the word’s image for the side of the gate.
ketef: flank or side, as of a place or slope
כֶּתֶף
This spatial use explains how a shoulder-word describes the gate’s bordering edge.
אֹרֶךְ
ʾorekh
GROWS FROM
ארך
ʾ-r-k
To be long, extend.
The pavement is related to the gate by its full extension, not merely by its location. The same root can describe length in space and duration in time.
ALSO GROWS
ʾārakh: lengthen, prolong
אָרַךְ
The gate’s length is the extent against which the pavement is measured.
ʾerekh appayim: slow to flare
אֶרֶךְ אַפַּיִם
Here the same root’s sense of length describes time: a long interval before anger flares.
THE PATTERN
Sacred space is laid out through measured parts, so the approach belongs to the design alongside the main structure.
And you shall raise up the dwelling according to its fashion, which was shown you on the mountain.And in the eleventh year, in the month Bul, which is the eighth month, the house was finished in all its parts, and according to all its ordinance. And he was seven years building it.who serve in a tracing and a shadow of the heavenly things, as Moses was warned by God when he was about to finish the tent. For look, he says, "Make all things according to the impression shown to you on the mountain."THE THREAD
And this is how you shall make it. Its length shall be three hundred forearms, its breadth fifty forearms, and its height thirty forearms.The Hebrew word אֹרֶךְ (ʾorekh, “length”) appears in both verses. Genesis measures the ark’s full span, while Ezekiel uses that same word to relate the pavement to the gates, letting one root connect a whole vessel’s dimensions with the ground alongside an entrance.
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