Now the building that was before the separate place,.... The "separate place" is the holy of holies, which was separated by a vail under the second temple, and by a wall as in this, and the first from the holy place: "before or over against" which was a building, as it is rendered, Eze 41:15, a new building, not before taken notice of: and it was situatedat the end toward the west: or "sea" , the Mediterranean sea, which lay west to the land of Canaan.
The meaning is, that this building was to the west of the temple, at which end stood the holy of holies, and this near to that: what building is here meant is not easy to say, there being nothing in the first or second temple which answered to it: it seems to be a new building; and what the mystical sense of it is cannot be easily guessed at.
Cocceius thinks, that as the holy of holies signifies the heavenly or more perfect state of the church on earth, this, being over against it, or behind it, as in Eze 41:15, may design heaven itself, the happiness and glory of the saints treasured up and reserved there:it was seventy cubits broad; Jerom seems to have the same mystical sense in view; since he observes, that after labours and perils, and the floods and shipwrecks of this world for seventy years, we come to enjoy the eternal rest:and the wall of the building was five cubits thick round about; which may answer to the vast gulf fixed between the godly in heaven, and the wicked in hell; so that there is no going the one to the other, Lu 16:26:and the length thereof ninety cubits; there are no outgoings to this building, as Hafenrefferus , a German divine, observes; so that those that are brought into it shall ever remain in it, which is the case of the saints in heaven.
Myh "ad mare, Piscator; obversa mari", Cocceius, Starckius.