What Does Exodus 27:12 Mean in the King James?
And for the breadth of the court on the west side shall be hangings of fifty cubits: their pillars ten, and their sockets ten.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
The west side’s “breadth” comes from the Hebrew seed for widening, naming the court’s room as spaciousness.
THE MEANING
The court’s western side has fifty cubits of breadth, with ten pillars and ten sockets; its openness has exact dimensions and supports. This meets you as a picture of spaciousness held in place: room has edges, and those edges do not erase the room.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It unsettles the belief that boundaries only constrict: the court is defined by hangings and pillars, yet its measured breadth makes room.
THE ROOT
רֹחַב
roḥav
GROWS FROM
רחב
r-ḥ-b
To be wide; to make spacious.
“breadth” in this verse is roḥav. English gives you a measurement, but רֹחַב comes from the seed for widening and spaciousness. That same seed appears in scripture’s “large place” language, so the verse describes not only a number but room opened wide.
ALSO GROWS
raḥav: Broad, wide.
רָחָב
This adjective shares the seed in “breadth,” making the court’s measured dimension part of a wider language of spaciousness.
merḥav: A broad place, spaciousness.
מֶרְחָב
This is the “large place” reached in Psalm 18:19 and Psalm 118:5, where spaciousness becomes a place a person can enter.
reḥovah: Broad, spacious.
רְחֹבָה
This form describes the “large” land in Exodus 3:8, linking the court’s breadth to room for a people to dwell.
THE PATTERN
Scripture presents spaciousness as something that can be inhabited by a people, reached from trouble, or carried within the heart.
And I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey; unto the place of the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Amorites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites.He brought me forth also into a large place; he delivered me, because he delighted in me.O ye Corinthians, our mouth is open unto you, our heart is enlarged.THE THREAD
I called upon the LORD in distress: the LORD answered me, and set me in a large place.“Large place” comes from the same Hebrew root רחב as “breadth” here. The shared seed opens the court’s measurement into a movement from distress into spaciousness.
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