2Ch 3:4-7 The porch and the interior of the holy place. - 2Ch 3:4. The porch which was before (i.e., in front of) the length (of the house), was twenty cubits before the breadth of the house, i.e., was as broad as the house. So understood, the words give an intelligible sense. הארך with the article refers back to הארך in 2Ch 3:3 (the length of the house), and על־פּני in the two defining clauses means “in front;” but in the first clause it is “lying in front of the house,” i.e., built in front; in the second it is “measured across the front of the breadth of the house.”
There is certainly either a corruption of the text, or a wrong number in the statement of the height of the porch, 120 cubits; for a front 120 cubits high to a house only thirty cubits high could not be called אוּלם; it would have been a מגדּל, a tower. It cannot with certainty be determined whether we should read twenty or thirty cubits; see in 1Ki 6:3. He overlaid it (the porch) with pure gold; cf. 1Ki 6:21.