Ezekiel 42, Priests' Rooms in the Third Temple

The new sanctuary ass been described in two previous chapters. We continue in that description. (If one is eager to see the Third Temple, one can purchase a set to build a model of this building!0

Ezekiel 42:1-9, Building to the north

Then the man led me northward into the outer court and brought me to the rooms opposite the temple courtyard and opposite the outer wall on the north side. The building whose door faced north was a hundred cubits long and fifty cubits wide. Both in the section twenty cubits from the inner court and  in the section opposite the pavement of the outer court, gallery faced gallery at the three levels. In front of the rooms was an inner passageway ten cubits wide and a hundred cubits long. Their doors were on the north. Now the upper rooms were narrower, for the galleries took more space from them than from the rooms on the lower and middle floors of the building.  The rooms on the third floor had no pillars, as the courts had; so they were smaller in floor space than those on the lower and middle floors. There was an outer wall parallel to the rooms and the outer court; it extended in front of the rooms for fifty cubits. While the row of rooms on the side next to the outer court was fifty cubits long, the row on the side nearest the sanctuary was a hundred cubits long. The lower rooms had an entrance on the east side as one enters them from the outer court.  

A building outside the temple is described. It had multiple floors. The building is about 150 feet long and 75 feet wide, of good size, if we use the measurements given by the NIV.

Ezekiel 42:10-12, On the south side

On the south side along the length of the wall of the outer court, adjoining the temple courtyard and opposite the outer wall, were rooms with a passageway in front of them. These were like the rooms on the north; they had the same length and width, with similar exits and dimensions. Similar to the doorways on the north were the doorways of the rooms on the south. There was a doorway at the beginning of the passageway that was parallel to the corresponding wall extending eastward, by which one enters the rooms.   

There is also a building on the south side of the temple.

Ezekiel 42:13-14, The priests' rooms

Then he said to me, "The north and south rooms facing the temple courtyard are the priests' rooms, where the priests who approach the LORD will eat the most holy offerings. There they will put the most holy offerings--the grain offerings, the sin offerings and the guilt offerings--for the place is holy. Once the priests enter the holy precincts, they are not to go into the outer court until they leave behind the garments in which they minister, for these are holy. They are to put on other clothes before they go near the places that are for the people."  

The rooms set aside for the priests are described here. Note that the sacrifices will continue in this new temple.

Ezekiel 42:15-20, Four sides

When he had finished measuring what was inside the temple area, he led me out by the east gate and measured the area all around: He measured the east side with the measuring rod; it was five hundred cubits. He measured the north side; it was five hundred cubits by the measuring rod. He measured the south side; it was five hundred cubits by the measuring rod. Then he turned to the west side and measured; it was five hundred cubits by the measuring rod. So he measured the area on all four sides. It had a wall around it, five hundred cubits long and five hundred cubits wide, to separate the holy from the common. 

The lengths of the gates on the east, north and south side are given along with the length of the west side. The wall around the temple is to separate the sacred inner parts of the temple from the common uses outside the temple. The sides of the temple area are "500" in length. The Hebrew text for verse 20 does not give the word "cubit" and the NIV inserts it, making the sides of the temple area 750 feet in length. However, Alexander (p. 968) argues that the implied unit is a rod, six times larger than the cubit, and so the temple area has sides close to a mile in length.

Overview

Mackie covers chapters 40 to 42 in sessions 25 and 26 of his Bible Project class on Ezekiel. There he argues that there are no height measurements in this description (except for that of the outer wall in 40:5) and that, unlike the instructions to Moses, this vision is never called a "pattern" or "plan." There is no command to build. So, argues Mackie, this is a vision of an ideal sanctuary already in existence.

Alexander, with an emphasis on a historical-grammatical method of interpretation of the Old Testament, interprets these chapters as describing a temple that will be constructed and used during the future Millenium. 

There are difficulties with either Mackie or Alexander's viewpoints as we move further into Ezekiel's prophecy of a future temple. Not only does a sacrificial system seem strange in this future Messianic environment, but there are also regulations about priests in the temple that do not fit easily into either point of view.