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Journey of a Passage

2 Chronicles 3:4

A porch 120 cubits high?

The Hebrew, the library's Greek, the Vulgate and the KJV give the temple porch a height of 120 cubits (about 55–60 m), four times the house's 30 cubits. Some Greek and Syriac witnesses are reported to read 20, which many translations adopt.

Manuscript variant: witnesses differ in wording

The family tree

Each row is a language or text tradition. Witnesses in the same row may share ancestry, revise one another, or have an uncertain relationship; the line under each box says which. A solid arrow appears only where direct copying or a documented revised edition is established. Order by date never implies copying. Scroll sideways on a phone.

✓ contains it · ✕ does not · ❝ quotes part of it · ⓘ reports on manuscripts · ▢ pages lost · – no copy survives

  • Same line, through lost copies
  • Translation
  • Related (shared ancestry)
Hebrew
  1. 1 Kings 6:2–3 (parallel account, Masoretic Text)Kings
  2. Original ChroniclesComposed c. 4th century BC (debated)
  3. Masoretic Text (Leningrad Codex)AD 1008Descends, through lost copies, from Original Chronicles
Greek
  1. Septuagint, 2 Paraleipomena (library text: Giguet's French)Translated c. 2nd century BCTranslated from a Hebrew text of Chronicles
  2. Some Greek manuscripts and the SyriacVariousRelated witness to the Old Greek tradition
Latin
  1. Jerome's Vulgatec. AD 400Translated from Hebrew texts of Jerome's day
English
  1. King James Bible1611Translated from printed Masoretic Hebrew

Every witness, in order

  1. Kings

    1 Kings 6:2–3 (parallel account, Masoretic Text)

    ✓ Contains this passage

    How the site knows this: Read in the site's library text: Westminster Leningrad Codex, a digital transcription of the Leningrad Codex, quoted here in English.

    the height thereof [the house] thirty cubits… the porch… twenty cubits was the length thereof

    No height for the porch is given in Kings.

  2. Composed c. 4th century BC (debated)

    Original Chronicles

    – No copy survives

    No original survives.

  3. Translated c. 2nd century BC

    Septuagint, 2 Paraleipomena (library text: Giguet's French)

    ✓ Contains this passageTranslated from a Hebrew text of Chronicles

    How the site knows this: Known here only through a translation.

    sa hauteur fut de cent vingt coudées

    One Greek text (Vaticanus type) via Giguet's French; not checked against a critical Greek edition.

  4. Various

    Some Greek manuscripts and the Syriac

    ⓘ Reports what manuscripts containedRelated witness to the Old Greek tradition

    How the site knows this: Reported in scholarship; not checked by the site.

    Reported to read twenty cubits. Not checked.

  5. c. AD 400

    Jerome's Vulgate

    ✓ Contains this passageTranslated from Hebrew texts of Jerome's day

    How the site knows this: Read in the site's library text: Clementine Vulgate (1592 edition).

    altitudo centum viginti cubitorum

  6. AD 1008

    Masoretic Text (Leningrad Codex)

    ✓ Contains this passageDescends, through lost copies, from Original Chronicles

    How the site knows this: Read in the site's library text: Westminster Leningrad Codex, a digital transcription of the Leningrad Codex.

    וְהַגֹּבַהּ מֵאָה וְעֶשְׂרִים

    and the height a hundred and twenty

  7. 1611

    King James Bible

    ✓ Contains this passageTranslated from printed Masoretic Hebrew

    How the site knows this: Read in the site's library text: King James Version (1769 text).

    the height was an hundred and twenty

What changed, and why

A 120-cubit tower-like porch is architecturally unlikely and unlike the regional temples ('Ain Dara, Tell Tayinat). Many scholars think "hundred" (me'ah) arose from a copying slip (e.g. from 'ammot, "cubits"). Others keep 120 as a pylon-like façade. The site does not choose a "corrected" height.

What the evidence shows

  • Independently documentedThe library's texts read 120 cubits.
  • Plausible, not confirmedThe original read 20 cubits.

Sources

  • E. Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible, 3rd ed. (2012)

Related lessons

  • The Temple Built on Mount Moriah →Solomon begins to build in Jerusalem "in mount Moriah," at Ornan's threshing floor. The house is sixty cubits by twenty; the porch is twenty cubits wide and, in the Hebrew, a hundred and twenty high. The most holy place is overlaid with six hundred talents of gold; two cherubim stand there; a veil of blue, purple and crimson hangs before it; two pillars, Jachin and Boaz, stand before the house.