217 Smend and Stade assume that it was a hundred and ten cubits long, and extended five cubits to the west beyond the line of the square to which it belongs. This was not necessary, and it would imply that the _binyā_ behind the Temple, to be afterwards described, was without a wall on its eastern side, which is extremely improbable. (So Davidson.)
218 According to the Septuagint they were either five or fifteen in number in each block.
219 From a later passage (ch. xlvi. 19, 20) we learn that in some recess to the west of the northern block of cells there was a place where these sacrifices (the sin‐, guilt‐, and meal‐offerings) were cooked, so that the people in the outer court might not run any risk of being brought in contact with them.
220 So in the LXX.
221 The actual building of the second Temple had of course to be carried out irrespective of the bold idealism of Ezekiel’s vision. The miraculous transformation of the land had not taken place, and it was altogether impossible to build a new metropolis in the region marked out for it by the vision. The Temple had to be erected on its old site, and in the immediate neighbourhood of the city. To a certain extent, however, the requirements of the ideal sanctuary could be complied with. Since the new community had no use for royal buildings, the whole of the old Temple plateau was available for the sanctuary, and was actually devoted to this purpose. The new Temple accordingly had two courts, set apart for sacred uses; and in all probability these were laid out in a manner closely corresponding to the plan prepared by Ezekiel.
222 It is not necessary to dwell on the third feature of the Temple plan, its symmetry. Although this has not the same direct religious significance as the other two, it is nevertheless a point to which considerable importance is attached even in matters of minute detail. Solomon’s Temple had, for example, only one door to the side chambers, in the wall facing the south, and this was sufficient for all practical purposes. But Ezekiel’s plan provides for two such doors, one in the south and the other in the north, for no assignable reason but to make the two sides of the house exactly alike. There are just two slight deviations from a strictly symmetrical arrangement that can be discerned; one is the washing‐ chamber by the side of one of the gates of the inner court, and the other the space for cooking the most holy class of sacrifices near the block of cells on the north side of the Temple. With these insignificant exceptions, all the parts of the sanctuary are disposed with mathematical regularity; nothing is left to chance, regard for convenience is everywhere subordinated to the sense of proportion which expresses the ideal order and perfection of the whole.
223 Heb. xii. 14.
224 Heb. ix. 8‐10.
225 2 Kings xxiii. 9. The sense of the passage is undoubtedly that given above; but the expression “unleavened bread” as a general name for the priests’ portion is peculiar. It has been proposed to read, with a change merely of the punctuation, instead of מַצּוֹת, מִצְוֹת = “statutory portions,” as in Neh. xiii. 5.
226 1 Sam. ii. 36.
227 Cf. ch. xxii. 26.
228 Ezra ii. 36‐40.
229 Ezra ii. 58.
230 Ezra viii. 15‐20.
231 On this peculiar affinity between holiness and uncleanness see the interesting argument in Robertson Smith’s _Religion of the Semites_, pp. 427 ff. The passage Hag. ii. 12‐14 does not appear to be inconsistent with what is there said. The meaning is that “very indirect contact with the holy does not make holy, but very direct contact with the unclean makes unclean” (Wellhausen, _Die Kleinen Propheten_, p. 170).