What Does Ezekiel 40:18 Mean in the King James?
And the pavement by the side of the gates over against the length of the gates was the lower pavement.
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 gate’s “side” is its shoulder in Hebrew, so even the ground alongside the entrance is described in the body’s language.
THE MEANING
The verse specifies the pavement beside the gates and measures its run against their length; it calls this the lower pavement. The entrance includes the surface that borders it, placed within the larger arrangement.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A gate is only its opening, and the ground beside it is incidental. Here the pavement is measured in relation to the gates, so the bordering surface belongs to the design.
THE ROOT
כֶּתֶף
ketef
GROWS FROM
כתף
k-t-p
Shoulder; by extension, the side or flank.
The Hebrew word translated “side” is the ordinary word for “shoulder.” It gives the gate a bodily contour: the pavement runs beside the gate’s shoulder.
ALSO GROWS
kāṯēp̄: shoulder, the body’s upper side
כָּתֵף
This bodily sense is the source of the word’s image for the side of the gate.
ketef: flank or side, as of a place or slope
כֶּתֶף
This spatial use explains how a shoulder-word describes the gate’s bordering edge.
אֹרֶךְ
ʾorekh
GROWS FROM
ארך
ʾ-r-k
To be long, extend.
The pavement is related to the gate by its full extension, not merely by its location. The same root can describe length in space and duration in time.
ALSO GROWS
ʾārakh: lengthen, prolong
אָרַךְ
The gate’s length is the extent against which the pavement is measured.
ʾerekh appayim: slow to flare
אֶרֶךְ אַפַּיִם
Here the same root’s sense of length describes time: a long interval before anger flares.
THE PATTERN
Sacred space is laid out through measured parts, so the approach belongs to the design alongside the main structure.
And thou shalt rear up the tabernacle according to the fashion thereof which was shewed thee in the mount.And in the eleventh year, in the month Bul, which is the eighth month, was the house finished throughout all the parts thereof, and according to all the fashion of it. So was he seven years in building it.Who serve unto the example and shadow of heavenly things, as Moses was admonished of God when he was about to make the tabernacle: for, See, saith he, that thou make all things according to the pattern shewed to thee in the mount.THE THREAD
And this is the fashion which thou shalt make it of: The length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits.The Hebrew word אֹרֶךְ (ʾorekh, “length”) appears in both verses. Genesis measures the ark’s full span, while Ezekiel uses that same word to relate the pavement to the gates, letting one root connect a whole vessel’s dimensions with the ground alongside an entrance.
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