What Does Ezekiel 40:25 Mean?
It had windows in it and in its porches all around, like those windows. Its length was fifty forearms, and its breadth twenty-five 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 there were windows in it and in the arches thereof round about, like those windows: the length was fifty cubits, and the breadth five and twenty cubits.THE KEY
The gate’s openness is built into its wall: each window is an intentional piercing, repeated within exact measure.
THE MEANING
This threshold has windows in the structure and its porch, running all around, and the whole span is measured. The openings do not cancel the enclosure; they belong to its design. A boundary can be defined without being sealed.
THE ROOT
חַלּוֹנוֹת
ḥallōnōt
GROWS FROM
חלל
ḥ-l-l
To pierce or bore through; this is a commonly proposed derivation for “window.”
“windows” in this verse is ḥallōnōt. The window’s name is commonly connected to the act of boring through: it is an opening within a solid boundary. Related words for something pierced and a hollow pipe show the root’s movement from piercing to an open passage.
ALSO GROWS
ḥālāl: A pierced or slain person.
חָלָל
The same root can describe what has been pierced; here, the piercing is an opening built into a wall.
ḥālîl: A hollow pipe instrument.
חָלִיל
Its open channel echoes the root’s sense of boring through, an opening made within a solid form.
THE PATTERN
Scripture places openings inside carefully formed structures; the boundary and the aperture belong to one design.
Make a window for the ark, and finish it a forearm down from the top. Place the opening of the ark in its side. Make it with lower, second, and third floors.And for the house he made windows that lean inward.The doorposts, and the narrow windows, and the galleries around on their three stories, facing the opening, with a ceiling of wood all around, and from the ground up to the windows, and the windows were shut.THE THREAD
Make a window for the ark, and finish it a forearm down from the top. Place the opening of the ark in its side. Make it with lower, second, and third floors.Genesis gives the ark a חַלּוֹן (ḥallôn, “window”), and Ezekiel gives this gate windows: in both verses, an opening is built into a bounded structure. The shared Hebrew word makes the connection literal, the opening belongs to the design of refuge and threshold.
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