The vestibule in front of the nave of the house was twenty cubits long, equal to the width of the house: In the Masoretic Text this clause is literally “And the vestibule, which [was] in/on front of the length on front of the width of the house, [was] twenty cubits.” The intended meaning is not clear, and almost certainly the existing text is the result of a scribal error in copying the text. As it stands, the uncorrected Masoretic Text may mean that the vestibule was 20 cubits long, corresponding to the width of the Temple, which was 20 cubits wide. But most interpreters understand the sense to be that the width of the vestibule was 20 cubits, with no mention of the length of the vestibule. Compare New Revised Standard Version, which says “The vestibule in front of the nave of the house was twenty cubits long, across the width of the house.” New Jerusalem Bible is similar with “and the portico in front of the house was the full width of the house, that is, twenty cubits,” and so is Berkeley with “The porch at the front end of the house reached across the 30-foot width of the house.” Based on this interpretation, Contemporary English Version is a good model: “Across the front of the temple was a porch thirty feet wide” (similarly Good News Translation). If the metric system is being used in the receptor language, twenty cubits would be rendered “9 meters” (GNT British edition, Nueva Versión Internacional, Nova Tradução na Linguagem de Hoje).

The variety of renderings in modern versions reflect the difficulty of knowing what the author intended. Scholars have proposed various changes to the Hebrew text, including the following:

• (1) Revised Standard Version has added the words of the nave of the house in order to make sense of the text.

• (2) Other scholars have corrected the text here to read “and the vestibule in front of the house was ten cubits deep and its length was twenty cubits, equal to the width of the house” (so Peregrino. This correction gives both the length and width of the vestibule and makes the text agree with 1 Kgs 6.3, which states that the vestibule was 20 cubits wide and extended 10 cubits in front of the nave.

• (3) Other translations, such as Revised English Bible, are based on a slightly different correction of the Masoretic Text here, reading “The vestibule in front of the house was twenty cubits long, spanning the whole breadth of the house” (similarly New American Bible).

• (4) Critique Textuelle de l’Ancien Testament suggests that the vowels in the Hebrew expression for “in front of” should be changed to read as an adverb, with the following translation: “the vestibule which was in front: its length, which was equal to the width of the house, was twenty cubits.” Critique Textuelle de l’Ancien Testament gives a {C} rating to the Masoretic Text with the proposed change in vowels.

For vestibule see the comments on 1 Chr 28.11. Other translations include “porch” (New Century Version, King James Version, New American Bible), “portico” (New Jerusalem Bible), and “entrance room” (Good News Translation). Osty-Trinquet transliterates the Hebrew term for vestibule as “Ulam,” but translators should render the Hebrew word with a meaningful term in the receptor language rather than use a word that will have no significance to their readers. The vestibule apparently served as an open-air forecourt through which the priests passed in order to enter the nave of the Temple. The information in the biblical texts is insufficient to determine whether or not this vestibule had a roof. In light of this uncertainty, it is better not to speak about a roof as New Living Translation does.

For the meaning of the word nave, see the introductory comments on this section. This word does not actually occur in the Hebrew text here; it is added by Revised Standard Version in an attempt to make sense of the Masoretic Text. In the next verse Good News Translation translates the Hebrew word for nave as “main room.” Revised English Bible has “large chamber,” and New Jerusalem Bible says “Great Hall.”

Equal to the width of the house means the vestibule was the same width as the Temple itself, which is given as 20 cubits in the previous verse. This information may be expressed as “was the full width of the Temple” (Good News Translation) or “was … wide, as was the Temple” (La Bible du Semeur).

And the height was a hundred and twenty cubits is literally “and the height [was] one hundred and twenty.” Revised Standard Version has added the word cubits as the sense requires. The vestibule was a hundred and twenty cubits high, which is equivalent to about 54 meters (180 feet). This figure differs from the parallel account in 1 Kings, and some ancient translations of this verse in 2 Chronicles also differ from the reading in the Masoretic Text. According to 1 Kgs 6.2, it was only 30 cubits (about 13.5 meters or 45 feet) high. Moreover, some manuscripts of the Septuagint and the ancient Syriac here say that the height was 20 cubits. This is the basis for those translations that say that the height was “thirty feet” (Contemporary English Version, NET Bible), “twenty cubits” (New International Version, Einheitsübersetzung, La Sainte Bible: La version Etablie par les moines de Maredsous), “nine meters” (Nueva Versión Internacional), or “ten meters” (La Bible du Semeur, Peregrino. In Hebrew the words for cubits (ʾammoth) and “hundred” (meʾah) are similar, and it is possible that a scribe mistakenly wrote “hundred” instead of “cubits.” It is also possible that the author exaggerated the height in order to make the Temple even more impressive in appearance. Critique Textuelle de l’Ancien Testament argues that the textual and historical evidence support the reading a hundred and twenty cubits, and gives a {B} rating to the reading of the Masoretic Text.

According to the Revised Standard Version translation, it was only the vestibule that was 120 cubits tall. But it is possible that the author intended the 120 cubits to refer to the height of the entire Temple. Nowhere else does the author indicate the height of the Temple.

He overlaid it on the inside with pure gold: Most interpreters understand the Hebrew verb for overlaid to mean that the inside of the vestibule was completely covered with gold. However, in verse 6 the same verb is rendered “adorned,” where it means “to stud,” that is, “to inlay.” Therefore some interpreters think that the sense here in verse 4, as in verse 6, is that the entire inside of the room was inlaid with gold leaf in the designs of palm trees and chains, not that the inside was completely covered with gold leaf. The parallel passage in 1 Kgs 6.3 does not indicate that the vestibule was overlaid with gold. So some interpreters think that this last sentence in verse 4 is an introduction to the following verses that refer to the nave rather than to the vestibule.

The Hebrew has only the pronoun He as the subject of the verb overlaid, but the reference is clearly to Solomon. Of course the king did not actually do the work himself, but rather he had it done by others. For this reason some languages will have to use a causative verb similar as in Parole de Vie, which says “Solomon had all the interior covered with pure gold.”

For pure gold, see the comments on 1 Chr 28.17.

Quoted with permission from Omanson, Roger L. and Ellington, John E. A Handbook on 1-2 Chronicles, Volume 1. (UBS Helps for Translators). Miami: UBS, 2014. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .