a grand house: the palace of a king or the temple of a god
TranslatabilityPartialCertaintySettled
In the world of Ezra and Daniel a temple was understood as a god's house, so one word covered both a king's residence and a god's. That is exactly what this word does. It names the great house at the center of a realm, and the surrounding words say who lives there.
Which one is meant is never in doubt, because the text always identifies the owner or the city:
the palace of the kingdom of Babylon, whose roof Nebuchadnezzar was walking on
the wall of the king's palace, where the writing appeared at Belshazzar's feast
the temple in Jerusalem, from which the gold and silver vessels had been carried off
On its own the word says nothing about worship. It says the building is great. That is why Ezra can use it, with no qualification and no apology, both for the house of the God of Israel and for the Babylonian building where the plundered vessels sat for decades. The ordinary Aramaic word for a house (בַּיִת) reaches the same places from the other direction: it starts plain and becomes the temple only in the phrase "house of God."
One use is less concrete than the rest. When Persian officials write to the king that they eat the salt of the palace, they mean they are in his service and live on his provision. There the palace stands for the royal household rather than for a building anyone is standing in.
Nuances
1aa royal palace: the great house where a king lives and rules
is the very word used for a king's palace, so it pictures the sanctuary as the residence of a royal occupantEzr 5:15
applies just as readily to a foreign god's house as to the house of the God of IsraelEzr 5:14
Both
both name the building where a god is held to dwell and where the sacred vessels belongEzr 6:5
Only temple
temple in English is a category of religious building set apart for worship, and says nothing about a resident ruler or a household
How hekhal differs from similar Aramaic words
בַּיִתthe plain Aramaic word for a house of any kind, which becomes the temple or the palace only once the owner is named, while this word already says the building is grand
Is the everyday word for a private dwelling, someone's own home.Dan 2:17Dan 6:10
Forms the fixed name of the Jerusalem sanctuary, "the house of God," the standing term Ezra uses again and again for the temple being rebuilt.Ezr 5:2Ezr 6:3Ezr 7:23
Names an ordinary building by its function, such as the archive and treasury where royal records were stored.Ezr 6:1
מְדוֹרwhere someone lives, with no building implied at all, used of the gods who do not dwell among people and of Nebuchadnezzar turned out among the animals
It names an actual building, solid enough to have parts the story can point at: a hand writes on the plaster of its wall, and a king strolls about on top of it.Dan 5:5Dan 4:29
It is the ordinary word for a god's house, the sanctuary whose gold and silver vessels can be hauled out of it, carried off to another country, and later ordered back.Dan 5:3Ezr 5:14Ezr 6:5
Because it is a structure standing in one place, a text can tell one of them from another by naming the city: the vessels leave the house of God in Jerusalem and are set down in the one in Babylon.Ezr 5:14Ezr 5:15Dan 5:2
It carries the rank of whoever owns it, so it can stand for the crown itself rather than for a place to sleep: royal officials describe their loyalty as eating "the salt of the palace," and Nebuchadnezzar boasts over the royal seat of Babylon he says he built.Ezr 4:14Dan 4:29
Both
Both can answer the plain question of where a particular person lives. Nebuchadnezzar is at ease in his palace, and Darius goes off to his palace to spend the night; that same Nebuchadnezzar later has his living place out with the animals and the wild donkeys.Dan 4:4Dan 6:18Dan 4:32Dan 5:21
It implies no building at all. Every time it appears, what fills it out is the company kept rather than any structure: the text says who or what someone lives among, using "with" and never naming walls or a roof.Dan 2:11Dan 4:25Dan 5:21
It can make the open country somebody's home. Nebuchadnezzar is driven away from people and his living place is out among the animals of the field and the wild donkeys, eating grass like cattle.Dan 4:25Dan 4:32Dan 5:21
It works for beings who have no house anywhere: the king's advisers plead that only gods "whose dwelling is not with flesh" could tell him his dream, saying where those gods belong without describing a shrine of any kind.Dan 2:11
hekhal in the other biblical languages
הֵיכָלHebrew“temple”the same word in Hebrew, far more common, which also narrows to the main hall of the temple as distinct from the innermost room
Most of its uses name the residence of a reigning king: the house he is at ease in, the roof he walks on, the rooms he withdraws to for the night, and the household whose salt his officials say they eat.Dan 4:4Dan 4:29Dan 6:18Ezr 4:14
Covers the foreign king's house and the house of God within one short stretch of a single story, so a translation that prints "temple" in one verse and "palace" three lines later hides the fact that one word is doing both jobs.Dan 5:3Dan 5:5
Turns up in official paperwork, where the building is an address in a royal order and its vessels are an inventory being moved from one place to another.Ezr 5:14Ezr 5:15Ezr 6:5
Both
Both name the temple in Jerusalem, and the book of Ezra hands the job from one to the other: the Hebrew chapters use the Hebrew word as the foundation is laid, the Aramaic chapters use the Aramaic word as the vessels are ordered back.Ezr 3:10Ezr 5:15
Both name a king's palace, and Daniel makes the same handoff: its Hebrew opening speaks of young men standing in the king's palace, its Aramaic chapters of the king walking on the palace of the kingdom of Babylon.Dan 1:4Dan 4:29
Both can name the temple of another god, so neither word on its own tells you whose house is meant; the surrounding words have to say.Jol 3:5Ezr 5:14
Narrows to a single room inside the building: in the building accounts and the temple visions it is the main hall, the space in front of the innermost room, not the whole complex.1Ki 6:31Ki 6:17Ezk 41:1Ezk 41:4
Names God's dwelling in heaven with no earthly building in view, so a prayer can reach a house that no one has built.Psa 11:4Psa 18:6Mic 1:2Hab 2:20
Is the place worshippers face, cry toward, and long to stay in, so the word carries the warmth of devotion and not only the outline of a building.Psa 5:7Psa 27:4Psa 138:2Jon 2:7
Stands at the center of prophetic warning and promise: the people are told not to trust the building, the laying of its foundation is marked as a turning point, and the Lord himself is expected to arrive there.Jer 7:4Hag 2:18Zec 6:13Mal 3:1
ναόςGreek“temple”the Greek word for the sanctuary building where a god dwells, which never also means a king's palace
Carries a second everyday meaning the Greek word never has: a king's palace. Nebuchadnezzar walks on its roof and rests inside it, a hand writes on the plaster of its wall while Belshazzar feasts, and Darius returns to it for a sleepless night.Dan 4:29Dan 4:4Dan 5:5Dan 6:18
Can stand for the royal household a person belongs to rather than the structure itself. The officials who write to the Persian king say they "eat the salt of the palace," meaning they draw their living from the crown and owe it their loyalty.Ezr 4:14
Both
Both name the Jerusalem sanctuary as God's own house. The Aramaic word is the building whose gold and silver vessels were carried off and ordered returned to it, and the Greek word is the house people swear by and that Jesus is accused of threatening to destroy.Ezr 5:15Dan 5:2Mat 23:21Mat 26:61
Both are used just as readily of a pagan god's shrine as of the true God's. One verse puts the temple in Jerusalem and the temple of Babylon side by side under the Aramaic word, and the Greek word covers the little silver shrines of Artemis that the craftsmen of Ephesus sold.Ezr 5:14Act 19:24
Narrows to the innermost holy room rather than the temple grounds as a whole. Zechariah goes inside it alone to burn incense while the crowd stays outside, the curtain that tore at Jesus' death hung in it, and John is told to leave out the surrounding courtyard when he measures it.Luk 1:9Mat 27:51Rev 11:2
Gets applied to living people. Jesus calls his own body this, and Paul says the same of a believer's body and of the church built together, so the word names where God actually dwells rather than a building at all.Jhn 2:211Co 6:192Co 6:16Eph 2:21
Names a sanctuary in heaven, one that opens, fills with smoke and sends out the voices that order the last judgments, until the new city needs none because God himself is its sanctuary. The Aramaic word never reaches past buildings on earth.Rev 11:19Rev 15:8Rev 21:22
What scholars say about hekhal
Biblical Aramaic hekhal is a loanword ultimately from Sumerian E.GAL, "great house," taken into Akkadian as ekallu and spread through Ugaritic, Phoenician, Hebrew, and Aramaic. HALOT's Aramaic section, BDB's Biblical Aramaic lexicon, and Vogt's Lexicon of Biblical Aramaic all treat it as a single entry with two applications, palace and temple, the second an extension of the first on the widespread ancient conception of a sanctuary as the residence of its deity; TDOT's article on the Hebrew cognate traces the same development. In Ezra the noun is confined to the vessel narratives (5:14, 15; 6:5) and to the salt-of-the-palace formula of the officials' letter (4:14); in Daniel it denotes the Babylonian royal residence (4:1, 4:26, 5:5, 6:19 in the Aramaic verse numbering) except at 5:2 and 5:3, where the Jerusalem sanctuary is meant. The identity of hekhala di Babel in Ezra 5:14 is generally taken as a Babylonian temple, and commentators on Ezra note the depository question raised by the parallel notice in 2 Chronicles 36:7, whose Hebrew cognate is rendered both "temple" and "palace." The Hebrew cognate further develops a specialized architectural use, the main hall of the temple over against the inner room, which Biblical Aramaic does not attest.
Sources
Koehler, Baumgartner, and Stamm, HALOT, Aramaic section, s.v. הֵיכַלlexicon
Brown, Driver, and Briggs, BDB, Biblical Aramaic lexicon, s.v. הֵיכַלlexicon
Ernst Vogt, A Lexicon of Biblical Aramaic, s.v. הֵיכַלlexicon
Franz Rosenthal, A Grammar of Biblical Aramaicgrammar
Magnus Ottosson, "hêkāl," in Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, vol. 3theological-dictionary
H. G. M. Williamson, Ezra, Nehemiah, Word Biblical Commentary 16commentary
John E. Goldingay, Daniel, Word Biblical Commentary 30commentary