What Does Ezekiel 41:8 Mean?
I saw also the height of the house round about. The foundations of the rib chambers were a full reed of six great 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
I saw also the height of the house round about: the foundations of the side chambers were a full reed of six great cubits.THE KEY
The temple’s side chambers are named with the Hebrew word for “ribs,” giving the building a bodily architecture English leaves hidden.
THE MEANING
You see the house’s height all around, with its side chambers resting on foundations measured as a full reed of six great cubits. Its scale is disclosed through what rises above and what supports the sides below.
THE ROOT
צְלָעוֹת
tsela'ot
GROWS FROM
צלע
Side; rib; the side of a body or structure.
“rib chambers” in this verse is tsela'ot. English separates “rib” from “side chamber,” but Hebrew uses tsela for both. The temple’s attached chambers are described with the same word used for the human body’s ribs, letting its architecture echo a body without spelling out the comparison.
ALSO GROWS
tsēlāʿ: A rib or side of the body.
צֵלָע
Genesis 2:22 uses this word for the rib; Ezekiel uses its plural for the temple’s side chambers.
tsēlāʿ: The side of a structure; in Ezekiel, a side chamber.
צֵלָע
This sense shows that the temple’s chambers are named by their position along its sides.
מוּסְדוֹת
musadot
GROWS FROM
יסד
To establish or lay a foundation.
The word for foundations carries the action of establishing: what you see as a base is something laid to make a structure steady. Here the measured support of the side chambers is part of how the house takes form.
ALSO GROWS
yasad: To establish, found, or lay a foundation.
יָסַד
The verb names the act behind the established base beneath the chambers.
yesod: A foundation or base.
יְסוֹד
This noun makes explicit the support on which the temple’s surrounding spaces rest.
THE PATTERN
A dwelling is shown as a whole through measured spaces and fitted parts, and scripture extends that image to a living temple.
The lowest chamber was five forearms broad, and the middle was six forearms broad, and the third was seven forearms broad; for outside in the wall of the house he made ledges that jut out round about, so that the beams would not grip the walls of the house.In whom the whole building, joined at the joints, grows into a set-apart temple in the Lord.Have you not seen that you are God's temple, and that the breath of God dwells in you?THE THREAD
And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from Adam, he built into a woman, and brought her to Adam.The word translated “rib” is tsela, the same Hebrew word rendered “side chambers” here. That shared word gives Ezekiel’s temple a bodily echo: its chambers are named as its sides, its ribs.
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