Verses 23-26. - The doors of the temple and of the sanctuary form the next subject for description. Again as in the Solomonic edifice (1 Kings 6:31, etc.), the holy place and the holy of holies had two doors; i.e. each had one door composed of two turning (or, folding) leaves, ornamented, like the walls of the house, with carvings of cherubim and palms. On the face of the porch without were thick planks, by which Ewald understands "foliage" or "leafwork," but which, with greater likelihood, were either as Keil renders, "moldings of wood" for the threshold; or "cornicings," as Kliefoth translates; if not, as Smend suggests, projecting beams to afford shelter to one standing in the porch; or as Hengstenberg and Plumptre say, "steps." The last verse states that narrow or closed (as in ver. 16) windows admitted light into the porch, while carvings of palm trees adorned its walls on each side. The cherubic figures, Plumptre hints, were absent, because the porch was a place of less sanctity than the temple. Hengstenberg notes that the words, "thick planks," "thick beams," or "steps," as he translates, fitly close this description, "as placing the extreme east over against the extreme west with which it began."

41:1-26 After the prophet had observed the courts, he was brought to the temple. If we attend to instructions in the plainer parts of religion, and profit by them, we shall be led further into an acquaintance with the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven.And the temple and the sanctuary had two doors. Or the house of propitiatory, as the Targum; that is, the most holy place; not two doors apiece, but each had one door, which made two; the door of the temple was ten cubits broad, and the door of the most holy place six cubits, Ezekiel 41:2 showing the door is wider, and more enter into the outward visible church, or less perfect state, even some bad, as well as good, than the door of the Jerusalem church state, or heavenly glory, into which fewer enter.