Verses 6-7 describe the side rooms of the Temple in more detail, but the Hebrew of verse 7 is so difficult that it is hard to know what it means (compare Jerusalem Bible, which does not even offer a translation of the second half of the verse; it inserts an ellipsis […] to show that something is missing). There are building terms here in Hebrew which are used so rarely that we are not sure what they mean, and translations often guess at a meaning to try to make sense of the passage.

And the side chambers were in three stories, one over another is literally “And [there were] three side chambers, chamber above chamber,” which means “these side rooms were built in three levels” (New Living Translation), that is, they were on “three floors” (New International Reader’s Version, Complete Jewish Bible). There were thirty in each story (literally “and thirty times”), that is, “thirty rooms on each level” (Contemporary English Version, New Living Translation). An alternate interpretation of the Hebrew runs these two phrases together, saying “Side room over side room, thirty-three times,” but this rendering makes so little sense that most scholars and translators dismiss it as a mistake. A model for this whole sentence is “There were three levels of the side rooms, and thirty rooms on each level.” There were probably twelve rooms on each level attached to the north wall of the Temple, twelve rooms on each level attached to the south wall, and six rooms on each level attached to the west wall.

There were offsets all around the wall of the temple to serve as supports for the side chambers: It is not certain what the offsets (literally “comings [in the wall]”) were. The traditional view is that Hebrew word for offsets is probably a technical building term, whose precise meaning has now been lost. Some translations choose a general term, such as “supports” (New Living Translation, Jerusalem Bible, Christian Community Bible), “projections” (New Jewish Publication Society’s Tanakh), or “ledges” (Contemporary English Version, New International Version, New International Reader’s Version, New Century Version, New King James Version ). Others use modern technical terms, such as “offsets” (Revised Standard Version/New Revised Standard Version, English Standard Version, New Jerusalem Bible, New American Bible), “rebatements” (Revised English Bible), or “intakes” (New English Bible). Offsets are horizontal ledges on a wall that are formed by progressively reducing the thickness of the wall. These ledges went all around the wall of the temple to serve as supports for the side chambers, that is, these ledges were part of the north, west and south walls of the Temple.

So that they should not be supported by the wall of the temple: This clause gives the reason for the ledges. The upper stories of the side rooms rested on these ledges and were attached to them namely, so that the side rooms were not directly attached to the walls of the Temple.

There are a number of problems with this traditional view of the way the side rooms were constructed. The main one is the way that the Temple wall becomes thinner as it rises (so Good News Translation with “The Temple’s outer wall on each floor was thinner than on the floor below,” and Contemporary English Version with “The walls of the temple were thicker at the bottom than at the top”). In verse 5 Ezekiel says the Temple walls were 3 meters thick, with no hint that this was only “at ground level” (Complete Jewish Bible) and that it was thinner further up. We believe it is unlikely that the walls of the main building of the Temple complex would change its measurements in this way, without Ezekiel mentioning it. Therefore we suggest that a better way of visualizing the side rooms is as follows:

In this illustration the supports attached to the Temple walls are ledges that go all around the wall of the Temple. They do not reduce the thickness of the Temple wall in any way, but they still support the side rooms so that the rooms do not have to be attached to the Temple wall itself. A model for the last half of this verse is “All around the wall of the Temple were ledges. They supported the side rooms so that they did not have to be attached to the Temple wall for support.”

Quoted with permission from Gross, Carl & Stine, Philip C. A Handbook on Ezekiel. (UBS Helps for Translators). Miami: UBS, 2016. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .