And the oracle in the forepart was twenty cubits in length, and twenty cubits in breadth, and twenty cubits in the height thereof: and he overlaid it with pure gold; and so covered the altar which was of cedar.

And the oracle within was twenty cubits in length, and twenty cubits in breadth, and twenty cubits in the height thereof; and he overlaid it with pure gold; and he overlaid the cedar-wood altar-

And the oracle in the forepart was twenty cubits in length, and twenty cubits in breadth, and twenty cubits in the hight of it, and he overlaid it with pure gold; and so covered the altar which was of cedar.

And before the oracle is twenty cubits in length, and twenty cubits in breadth, and twenty cubits is its height; and he overlayeth it with gold refined, and overlayeth the altar with cedar.

And the inmost room was twenty cubits square and twenty cubits high, plated over with clear gold, and he made an altar of cedar-wood, plating it with gold.

And before the Sanctuary which was twenty cubits in length, and twenty cubits in breadth, and twenty cubits in the height thereof, overlaid with pure gold, he set an altar, which he covered with cedar.

And before the sanctuary was twenty cubits in length, and twenty cubits in breadth, and twenty cubits in its height; and he overlaid it with pure gold: and he covered the altar with cedar.

And the oracle held twenty cubits in length, and twenty cubits in width, and twenty cubits in height. And he covered and clothed it with the purest gold. Then, too, he clothed the altar in cedar.

The fore part - Perhaps "the interior."
And so covered - Rather, "and he covered the altar (of incense) with cedar." The altar was doubtless of stone, and was covered with cedar in preparation for the overlaying with gold. This overlaying was not gilding, but the attachment of thin plates of gold, which had to be fastened on with small nails. Such a mode of ornamentation was common in Babylonia, in Assyria, and in Media.

And the oracle in the forepart,.... Which stood in the forepart of the temple, before a man's face as he entered into it, and went on; or the forepart of the holy of holies, next to the holy place, was of the dimensions as follows, when the back part of it might be higher at least, and be equal to the holy place, even thirty feet; the forepart being lower, and left open to let in the light of the candlesticks, and the smoke of the incense, out of the holy place: this
was twenty cubits in length, and twenty cubits in breadth, and twenty cubits in the height thereof: and was a perfect square, and as the most holy place may be an emblem of the church triumphant, it may denote the perfection of its heavenly state; so the new Jerusalem is a foursquare, Revelation 21:16;
and he overlaid it with pure gold; make it rich, glorious, and magnificent, and may denote the glory of the heavenly state, Revelation 21:21; and so Florus (z), the Roman historian, calls it the golden heaven, as it were, into which Pompey went, and saw the great secret of the Jewish nation, the ark:
and so covered the altar which was of cedar; the altar of incense, which is here mentioned, because it was near the most holy place, 1-Kings 6:22; this altar by Moses was made of shittim wood, but Solomon's was of cedar it seems; unless, as the words will bear to be rendered, "he covered the altar with cedar" (a); though made of shittim wood, it had a covering of cedar over it; or if of stone, such a covering was on it, that it might better receive the gold which was afterwards put upon it.
(z) De Gest. Roman. l. 3. c. 5. (a) "operuit cedro", Montanus.

"And the interior of the hinder room was twenty cubits the length, twenty cubits the breadth, and twenty cubits its height." The word לפני I agree with Kimchi in regarding as the construct state of the noun לפנים, which occurs again in 1-Kings 6:29 in the sense of the inner part or interior, as is evident from the antithesis לחיצום (on the outside). "And he overlaid it with fine gold." סגוּר זהב (= סגור =( ז in Job 28:15) unquestionably signifies fine or costly gold, although the derivation of this meaning is still questionable; viz., whether it is derived from סגר in the sense of to shut up, i.e., gold shut up or carefully preserved, after the analogy of כּתם; or is used in the sense of taking out or selecting, i.e., gold selected or pure; or in the sense of closed, i.e., gold selected or pure; or in the sense of closed, i.e., gold condensed or unadulterated (Frst and Delitzsch on Job 28:15).
The Most Holy Place had therefore the form of a perfect cube in the temple as well as in the tabernacle, only on an enlarged scale. Now, as the internal elevation of the house, i.e., of the whole of the temple-house, the hinder portion of which formed the Most Holy Place, was thirty cubits, there was a space of about ten cubits in height above the Most Holy Place and below the roof of the temple-house for the upper rooms mentioned in 2-Chronicles 3:9, on the nature and purpose of which nothing is said in the two accounts.
(Note: This upper room does not presuppose, however, that the party wall, which follows as a matter of course from 1-Kings 6:16, was not merely a cedar wall, but a wall two cubits thick. The supposed difficulty of setting up a cedar wall thirty cubits high is not so great as to necessitate assumptions opposed to the text. For we cannot possibly see why it could not have been made secure "without injuring the temple wall." The wood panelling must have been nailed firmly to the wall without injuring the wall itself; and therefore this could be done just as well in the case of the cedar beams or boards of the party wall.)
"And he overlaid (clothed) the altar with cedar wood." There is something very striking in the allusion to the altar in this passage, since the verse itself treats simply of the Most Holy Place; and still more striking is the expression לדּביר אשׁר המּזבּח, "the altar belonging to the Debir," in 1-Kings 6:22, since there was no altar in the Most Holy Place. We cannot remove the strangeness of these sentences by such alterations as Thenius and Bttcher propose, because the alterations suggested are much too complicated to appear admissible. The allusion to the altar in both these verses is rather to be explained from the statements in the Pentateuch as to the position of the altar of incense; viz., Exodus 30:6, "Thou shalt place it before the curtain, which is above the ark of the testimony before the capporeth over the testimony;" and Exodus 40:5, "before the ark of the testimony;" whereby this altar, although actually standing "before the inner curtain," i.e., in the Holy Place, according to Exodus 40:26, was placed in a closer relation to the Most Holy Place than the other two things which were in the Holy Place. The clothing of the altar with cedar presupposes that it had a heart of stone; and the omission of the article before מזבּח may be explained on the ground that it is mentioned here for the first time, just as in 1-Kings 6:16, where דּביר was first mentioned, it had no article.

Forepart - Which was in the inner part of the house, called in Hebrew, the forepart; not because a man first enters there, but because when a man is entering, or newly entered into the house, it is still before him. Covered - With gold, 1-Kings 7:48; 1-Chronicles 28:18. The altar - The altar of incense.