Ezekiel 42:19

Hebrew (Westminster Leningrad Codex)

English Translation

He turned about to the west side, and measured five hundred reeds with the measuring reed.

World English Bible · Public Domain

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מָדַ֛ד

mâdad

H4058

“to measure”

Verb, Qal, Perfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular

Appears 51× in the Hebrew Bible
First appears at Exodus 16:18

Full BDB Definition

Origin: a primitive root

TWOT: 1146

to measure, stretch - (Qal) to measure - (Niphal) to be measured - (Piel) - to extend, continue - to measure, measure off - (Po) measured - (Hithpolel) to extend oneself, stretch oneself

About this verse

These counts appear in no published source. They are computed here, from the morphology-tagged text and Lemma’s own curated glosses. What Lemma adds →

10: words
9: distinct lemmas
Prophets: section

Shared distinctive vocabulary

מָדַ֛ד to measure H4058 occurs in 49 verses of the Hebrew Bible. Also found in:

Grammatical profile

2 verbs
5 nouns
2 adjectives
1 preposition

Verb forms

סָבַ֖ב Qal · Perfect
מָדַ֛ד Qal · Perfect

Repetition

A word recurs within this verse — often emphatic in Hebrew:

קָנִ֖ים reed H7070 ×2

Hebrew & Septuagint length

In English translation the verse runs 16 words from the Hebrew and 21 from the Septuagint (LXX English) — closely comparable.

A rough comparison of the two English renderings, which tokenize alike — not a word-level alignment.

Word counts can differ between the Hebrew and the Greek without any difference in meaning — e.g. the Hebrew direct-object marker אֵת has no separate Greek word, and Greek often adds the article ὁ.

In the original languages it is 10 Hebrew tokens and 15 Greek tokens — but the two are counted differently (Hebrew bundles its prefixes and suffixes into one token; the Greek is in lemma form), so that isn’t a like-for-like length.

Hebrew and Greek witnesses Masoretic Hebrew ↔ Greek Septuagint

The same verse in the two great witnesses to the Old Testament, shown verse-for-verse.

These are two independent witnesses, not word-aligned to each other, and the Septuagint is shown in lemma (dictionary) form.

Hebrew Ezekiel 42:19 Masoretic · Westminster Leningrad Codex

סָבַ֖ב אֶל ר֣וּחַ הַיָּ֑ם מָדַ֛ד חֲמֵשׁ מֵא֥וֹת קָנִ֖ים בִּקְנֵ֥ה הַמִּדָּֽה

He turned about to the west side, and measured five hundred reeds with the measuring reed.

World English Bible · Public Domain

Greek LXX Ezekiel 42:19 Septuagint · lemma form

καί ἐπιστρέφω πρός νότος καί διαμετρέω κατέναντι ὁ νότος πεντακόσιοι ἐν ὁ κάλαμος ὁ μέτρον

And he turned to the south, and measured in front of the south side, five hundred cubits by the measuring reed.

LXX2012 (modern English Septuagint) · Public Domain

Hebrew: Westminster Leningrad Codex (CC BY 4.0). Greek: Septuagint (public domain); English from LXX2012 (modern English Septuagint) (Public Domain). How the Septuagint differs from the Hebrew →

Targum (Aramaic paraphrase)

The Targum is the ancient Jewish Aramaic paraphrase of the Hebrew Scriptures — an interpretive translation, not the Hebrew text itself. Onkelos (literal) and Pseudo-Jonathan (expansive) render the Torah, and Jonathan the Prophets. Coverage is partial: where no permissively-licensed English translation exists for a verse, only the Aramaic is shown. This is verse-level text, not a word-by-word alignment to the Hebrew.

Targum Jonathan Prophets (Joshua–Malachi)

אִסְתְּחַר לְרוּחַ מַעַרְבָא מְשַׁח חֲמֵשׁ מְאָה קְנִין בִּקְנֵי מִשְׁחֲתָא:

(no public-domain English translation for this verse)

Targum Jonathan — Aramaic: “Mikraot Gedolot” (public domain). English: “Sefaria Community Translation” (CC0 1.0 (public-domain dedication)); “London "Chaldee Paraphrase," 1871” (public domain). Text via Sefaria.

Commentary

Notes on Ezekiel 42:19 from classic Christian and Jewish commentators (each source and its license shown beneath its notes). The classic Christian expositions comment on the surrounding passage and are grouped to its opening verse, so a note may address several verses; the Jewish commentaries on the Tanakh (Rashi and others) are per-verse, so they appear only where the commentator wrote on this verse.

Lemma curates 59 commentaries, every one of them public domain or Creative Commons licensed, each selected and text-cleaned for this edition rather than reprinted as found. About our sources →

Adam Clarke's Commentary

Verse 19. See Clarke on Eze 42:16.

Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

John Gill's Exposition

He turned about to the west side,.... And took the dimensions of that, from angle to angle, the south and north points of it:

and measured five hundred reeds, with the measuring reed; and it was exactly of the same measure with the other three sides.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations

Here is nothing new added but what is in the 16th verse. I observe that the 16th and 17th verses expressly mention the measuring round about, and why I should doubt it was twice done, when it is related twice, as done from different points, I know not; and then it is easy, and likely enough, that the double relation of this measuring in the 18th and 19th verses will be the relation of the same way of measuring from other points; which, I suppose, is the ground of Villalpandus’s opinion, and is far more agreeable to the Hebrew text, and context, and account, and more agreeably to divinity, than that of L. C.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

Lesson kit

Teaching starters — assembled from the data on this page, not authored interpretation. Every prompt links to the verse data it draws on. Edit before teaching.

Ezekiel, in the Prophets, opens this verse with 10 words (9 distinct Hebrew lemmas). Its most distinctive word is mâdad (“to measure”). A historical commentator’s framing appears above. Read the whole chapter for the surrounding context.

Discussion questions

What does “to measure” (mâdad) contribute to the verse as a whole?
How does Exodus 16:18, which shares the word «to measure», read alongside this verse?
What does the repetition of “reed” (2× in this one verse) do in this verse?
These translations render this verse differently. What is at stake in choosing one wording over another?
«סָבַ֖ב» is a Qal Perfect verb. How does that grammatical form shape the action described?
Compare how Adam Clarke's Commentary and John Gill's Exposition read this verse. Where do they agree or differ?

Things to notice

This verse counts 10 Hebrew ↔ 15 Greek words.
These translations choose different wording for 9 words in this verse.
“reed” occurs 2× in this single verse.
9 distinct Hebrew lemmas span 10 words in this verse.