What Does Ezekiel 41:2 Mean?
And the breadth of the door was ten forearms, and the shoulders of the door were five forearms on the one side and five forearms on the other. He measured its length, forty forearms, and its breadth, twenty 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 breadth of the door was ten cubits; and the sides of the door were five cubits on the one side, and five cubits on the other side: and he measured the length thereof, forty cubits: and the breadth, twenty cubits.THE KEY
The doorway is measured as part of the sacred room, so access belongs to the design of the space.
THE MEANING
The entrance has its own measured width, with five cubits on each side, while the room has its own length and breadth. The opening and the chamber have distinct proportions, yet both belong to one measured space. Access and spaciousness come into view together.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The entrance is an incidental gap, separate from the sacred space; here it is measured alongside the room’s dimensions.
THE ROOT
פֶּתַח
petach
GROWS FROM
פתח
To open or unfasten.
“the door” in this verse is petach. The Hebrew word for this doorway belongs to the root for opening. The entrance is not just an object in the wall; it is the opening made in what encloses the room, and the verse gives that opening its own measure.
ALSO GROWS
patach: To open or unfasten.
פָּתַח
The doorway is named from the action of opening: it is access made in the room’s enclosing boundary.
petach: An opening or entrance.
פֶּתַח
The same root names both the act of opening and the passage it creates; here that passage has a measured width.
רֹחַב
rochav
GROWS FROM
רחב
To be wide or spacious.
The room’s breadth comes from a word family that names spaciousness. English gives the dimension as a number; the Hebrew also carries the sense of room to open out.
ALSO GROWS
rachav: To become wide or widen.
רָחַב
The room’s breadth shares its root with the action of widening.
merchav: An open space or expanse.
מֶרְחָב
This branch names breadth as roominess, giving the chamber’s measured width a sense of open space.
THE PATTERN
Sacred space is shown through measured boundaries and deliberately formed ways of entry.
And you shall make a hanging for the door of the tent, of blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine twined linen, wrought with needlework.And for the entering of the innermost room he made doors of olive tree; the lintel and side posts were a fifth of the wall.And the one who speaks with me holds a golden reed to measure the city, and its gates, and its wall.THE THREAD
If you do well, will you not be lifted up? And if you do not do well, falling short crouches at the door. Its reaching is toward you, and you shall rule over it.“At the door” uses petach (פֶּתַח, opening), the same word used for the measured entrance here. The shared word makes the doorway a charged boundary: an opening is where what is within and without meet.
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