Noteworthy is the word altar, which in this verse renders two distinct Hebrew terms, הַרְאֵל and אֲרִיאֵל, which Gesenius, Hitzig, Ewald, Smend, and others, after the LXX. ( τὸ ἀριὴλ), identify as synonymous, and translate by "hearth." But the first can only signify "the mount of God," while the latter may mean either "lion of God" or "hearth of God." Kliefoth, deriving the latter from אָרָה, "to consume," and אַיִך, "a ram," prefers as its import "ram-devourer;" Hengstenberg, resolving into אַיִל "a ram," and אְרַיִ, "a lion," proposes as its equivalent "ram-lion." i.e. "the lion that consumes the rams for God"—a ten-doting closely allied to that of Kliefoth. In any case, the terms allude to parts of the altar: the second, Ariel (equivalent to the hearth on which God's fire burns), according to Keil, Kliefoth, and the best expositors, meaning the flat surface of the altar; and the first, Harel (conveying the ideas of elevation and sanctity), the base on which it rested. The height of this base was four cubits, while from the hearth projected four horns, as in the altars of the Mosaic tabernacle (Exodus 27:2; Exodus 38:2; Le Exodus 4:7, Exodus 4:18; Exodus 8:15) and Solomonic temple (Psalms 118:27). If the length of these be set down, as Kliefoth suggests, at three cubits, then the whole height of the altar will be in cubits—one for the ground bottom, two for the lower settle, four for the upper, four for the bases of the hearth, with three for the horns, equal to fourteen in all; or, omitting the horns, of which the length is not given, and the altar base, which is distinguished from the altar, ten cubits in all for the altar proper. As to the symbolic import of the "horns," Kurtz, after Hofmaun and Kliefoth, finds this in the idea of elevation, the "horns," as the highest point in the altar, bringing the blood put upon them nearer to God than the sides did the blood sprinkled on them (see 'Sacrificial Worship of the Old Testament,' § 13); Keil, after Bahr, in the notions of strength, beauty, and blessing, the horns of an animal being the points in which its power, grace, and fullness of life are concentrated, and therefore fitting emblems of those points in the altar in which appears "its significance as a place of the revelation of Divine might and strength, of Divine salvation and blessing" ('Biblische Archaologie,' § 20).
The measurements that now begin concern the breadth of the altar, and proceed from above downwards. First the altar, or, hearth of God (Hebrew, ariel) was twelve cubits long and twelve broad, i.e. was square in the four squares (or, sides) thereof, or a perfect square (comp. Exodus 27:1; Revelation 21:16). Next the settle, or, enclosure (Hebrew, הָ) of Ezekiel 43:14, was fourteen cubits long, and fourteen broad in the four squares (or, sides) thereof; the fourteen being made up of the twelve cubits of the altar-hearth's side with one cubit of ledge from the settle all round. The only question is to which "settle," the upper or the under, reference is made. Some expositors, identifying the greater Azarah with the Harel, i.e. the "upper settle," with "the mount of God" or the base of the hearth, make the altar height only seven cubits from the ground to the hearth. The general belief, however, is that they cannot be so identified. Among interpreters who distinguish them, Kliefoth, with whom Smend agrees, holds the "settle" in this verse to be the harel, or "mount of God," which extended (Smend says with a hek. or "gutter") one cubit on each side beyond the ariel, or "hearth of God," so that the "mount of God," on which the" hearth of God" rested, was fourteen cubits square. Then, assuming a similar extension of one cubit at each stage—in the greater azarah, the lesser azarah, and the hek, or ground bottom—he finds the surface of the greater azarah to be sixteen, of the lesser azarah eighteen, and of the ground bottom twenty cubits square. Keil, with whom Schroder and Currey agree, objects to this as involving too much of arbitrary assumption, and takes the" settle" of this verse to mean the lower azarah; so that no additional measurements are required beyond those given in the text. If the square surface of the greater azarah be considered as having been the same as that of the harel, so that their sides were continuous, then, as the "ground bottom" extended one cubit on each side beyond the lower azarsh, the altar at its base was a square of sixteen cubits. Comparing now these measurements with those of the altar of burnt offering in the tabernacle and the temple, one finds that the former was only five cubits square and three cubits high (Exodus 27:1), while the latter was twenty cubits broad, but only ten cubits high (2 Chronicles 4:1), which awakes the suspicion that the different views above noted have been insensibly influenced by a desire on the part of their authors to make them harmonize with the measurements of the temple. But there does not appear sufficient reason why the measurements of Ezekiel's altar should have agreed with those of Solomon's rather than with those of Moses', The border (or, parapet) of half a cubit which ran round the ledge, or bottom, of a cubit, at the foot of the lower azarah was clearly designed, not for the protection of the priest officiating, but for ornament. The stairs (or, steps), mention of which closes the description, mark a departure, not from the pattern of the Solomonic temple, in which the altar must have had steps, but from the pattern of the tabernacle, in which altar-steps were disallowed (Exodus 20:26) and did not exist (Exodus 38:1-7). But if, as Jewish tradition asserts, the pest-exilic altar had no steps as Ezekiel's had, having been reached by an inclined plane, because in the so-called book of the covenant steps were forbidden, how does this harmonize with the theory that Ezekiel's vision temple was designed as a model for the post-exilic temple? And why, if the priest-code was the composition of a writer who worked in the spirit and on the lines of Ezekiel, should it have omitted to assign steps to the tabernacle altar?