What Does Ezekiel 42:7 Mean?
And the outer wall, facing the chambers in front of their faces, toward the outer enclosure, was fifty forearms long.
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 wall that was without over against the chambers, toward the utter court on the forepart of the chambers, the length thereof was fifty cubits.THE KEY
The word for wall also carries the act of walling in, and elsewhere names the one who repairs a breach.
THE MEANING
The verse holds two spaces in relation: chambers on one side, the outer court beyond them, with a wall standing across the front. Its length is counted as fifty cubits; the dividing line belongs to the design as much as the rooms do.
THE ROOT
גָּדֵר
gader
GROWS FROM
ג־ד־ר
To wall in, fence, or enclose
“outer wall” in this verse is gader. The word for wall belongs to the root גדר, meaning to wall in or enclose. Its branch גֹּדֵר, “one who walls or repairs,” appears in Isaiah’s phrase “repairer of the breach,” so the same root names both a boundary and its mending.
ALSO GROWS
gadar: To wall in, fence, or enclose
גָּדַר
This verb names the action held in the verse’s wall: enclosing and defining a space.
goder: One who walls or repairs; a repairer
גֹּדֵר
Isaiah uses this form for the “repairer of the breach,” showing how the same root can name the mending of a boundary.
gederah: A fence or enclosure
גְּדֵרָה
This related noun makes visible the root’s movement from the act of enclosing to the bounded space itself.
THE PATTERN
A boundary gives a space definition, and when it breaks, restoration begins by rebuilding it.
Why do you break through her hedges, and all who pass by the way pluck her?Those who come from you shall build the dry ruins of the ages. You shall raise up the foundations of generation to generation, and you shall be called the mender of the breach, the one who turns the paths back to dwell in.It has a great and high wall, and twelve gates, and at the gates twelve messengers, and names written upon them, which are the names of the twelve tribes of the children of Israel.THE THREAD
Those who come from you shall build the dry ruins of the ages. You shall raise up the foundations of generation to generation, and you shall be called the mender of the breach, the one who turns the paths back to dwell in.The wall outside the chambers and the “repairer of the breach” share גדר, the root of walling and enclosing. Ezekiel gives the boundary its measured form; Isaiah shows the same root at work where that boundary has opened and needs repair.
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