Ezekiel 42:15-20

15-20. If the present Hebrew text is to be followed, we have here a measurement of an outer wall, encompassing the temple quadrangle, three thousand sacred cubits (three thousand five hundred common cubits) long on every side. However, as this wall is not mentioned elsewhere, many scholars follow the LXX. text, reading “cubit,” instead of “reed.” Such a wall five hundred cubits on each side is spoken of Ezekiel 45:2, and is entirely in accordance with the other measurements as given in detail. Yet if the Hebrew manuscripts originally read “cubit,” how could the word “reed” have been substituted for it? It is easy to see how the LXX. might in this, as in other cases, have changed the unusual statement to that which was more easily understood. No literal temple nine million square cubits in area could have been accommodated on any one of the mountains of Palestine. The reed is elsewhere very seldom used as a measure. (Yet see Ezekiel 45:1; Ezekiel 48:16.) In either case this wall was to mark the boundary between the sacred and the common (compare Ezekiel 43:12; Ezekiel 45:4), and whether the measurement was in cubits or reeds, the symbolism was the same. The perfect cube emblemed the perfect temple the ideal church in the midst of the ideal nation.