[33] The Septuagint translates, "Mesoch and Thobel."
[34] This is the more satisfactory rendering. The marginal reading, "Strike thee with six plagues" or "draw thee back with a hook of six teeth" is incorrect.
[35] See "The Prophet Joel," by A. C. G., where this interesting and important chapter is explained in full.
[36] What strange applications have been made of this vision! We quote from the "New Century Bible" which says concerning this temple: "Its details shed a light nowhere else vouchsafed to us upon the ideals of Hebrew art, influenced perhaps, by Babylonian masterpieces, yet entirely national and Puritan; and they embody in material form Ezekiel's sober but intense conception of religion, as completely as the Gothic cathedrals translate into concrete and abiding stone and marble the soaring visions of mediaeval Christianity."(!)
[37] May also be translated "and set me upon a very high mountain, and upon it was as the building of a city, on the south." It will be upon that exalted mountain.
[38] Seven days the priests had to take in their consecration; on the eighth day they entered upon their work. Circumcision was practised on the eighth day, symbolical of the death of Christ and the putting off of the body of the flesh (Col. ii:1), the entrance into the new creation. On the eighth day Christ was transfigured and the transfiguration is a type of His coming into the kingdom. The eighth psalm shows Him the head of the new creation, with all things under His feet.
[39] The Septuagint gives ten cubits instead of only eleven, which probably is correct.
[40] The words "which was the breadth of the tabernacle" are by some declared doubtful. The Septuagint has omitted them.
[41] i. e., To the level place where the side chambers begin.
[42] Corrected text.