What Does Ezekiel 42:20 Mean in the King James?
He measured it by the four sides: it had a wall round about, five hundred reeds long, and five hundred broad, to make a separation between the sanctuary and the profane place.
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 holy is not a vague feeling here; it is a boundary measured into space.
THE MEANING
What is set apart has a real edge: the sanctuary stands distinct from the common place, with its boundary measured on all four sides. The verse makes that distinction visible as structure, not an invisible idea.
THE ROOT
הַקֹּדֶשׁ
ha-qodesh
GROWS FROM
קָדַשׁ
To set apart or consecrate.
The word rendered “sanctuary” carries the sense of what is set apart. The wall gives that meaning a visible form: this space is distinct from the common place around it.
ALSO GROWS
qadosh: Set apart.
קָדוֹשׁ
It shares the root of “sanctuary,” showing that the place and its defining quality grow from the same word.
miqdash: Sanctuary, a set-apart place.
מִקְדָּשׁ
This branch makes the root’s meaning spatial, as the measured sanctuary is in this verse.
לְהַבְדִּיל
le-havdil
GROWS FROM
בָּדַל
To separate or distinguish one thing from another.
“separation” in this verse is le-havdil. The wall enacts the verb: the sanctuary and the common place are not merely named as different, but physically distinguished. This same root marks distinctions elsewhere between light and darkness, and between what is set apart and what is common.
ALSO GROWS
wayyavdel: And he separated.
וַיַּבְדֵּל
In Genesis 1:4, the same root describes light being separated from darkness, making distinction part of creation’s order.
le-havdil: To distinguish or separate.
לְהַבְדִּיל
Leviticus 10:10 uses this form for distinguishing the set-apart from the common, the same distinction this wall makes visible.
THE PATTERN
Order becomes visible through boundaries that distinguish what must not be confused.
And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.And that ye may put difference between holy and unholy, and between unclean and clean;For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.THE THREAD
And that ye may put difference between holy and unholy, and between unclean and clean;Leviticus uses the same root, בָּדַל (badal, to distinguish or separate), to name the act of discerning the set-apart from the common. Ezekiel gives that distinction a measured wall; Leviticus names it as a way of seeing what is set apart, common, clean, and unclean.
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