What Does Ezekiel 40:23 Mean?
And the gate of the inner enclosure faced the gate toward the hidden north and toward the sunrise, and he measured from gate to gate, one hundred forearms.
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 gate of the inner court was over against the gate toward the north, and toward the east; and he measured from gate to gate an hundred cubits.THE KEY
Inwardness here is a measured relation: the inner gate faces an outer one across a defined span.
THE MEANING
The inward place has thresholds that face the openings at its edges. What lies between them has measure, so passage inward belongs to an intelligible arrangement rather than an empty gap.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The inner and outer are unrelated spaces, with nothing meaningful between their thresholds.
THE ROOT
וַיָּמָד
wayyāmad
GROWS FROM
מָדַד
madad
to measure, to mark out an extent
The verb shares its seed with terms for a dimension and for one who measures, joining the act, the measured interval, and the measurer in one word family. The hundred cubits is a defined span in the architecture, not an undefined space between two openings.
ALSO GROWS
middāh: measure, dimension, extent
מִדָּה
This branch names the extent itself: the space between the gates has a stated measure.
mōdēd: one who measures
מוֹדֵד
This branch names the one carrying out the measurement, showing that the interval is deliberately surveyed.
THE PATTERN
Sacred space is revealed through measured boundaries that keep its entrances in relation.
Then he measured the breadth from the face of the lower gate to the face of the inner court outside, one hundred forearms toward the sunrise and toward the north.Then I said, Where are you going? And he said to me, To measure Jerusalem, to see how wide it is and how long it is.And the one who speaks with me holds a golden reed to measure the city, and its gates, and its wall.THE THREAD
Now when he had finished measuring the inner house, he brought me out toward the gate whose face was toward the east, and measured it all around.Both verses use מָדַד (madad), meaning “to measure,” to make the space around thresholds concrete. Here the inner and outer gates are set in relation; there, measuring the inner house leads toward the eastern gate, extending the same measured design outward.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us