And the house, that is, the temple before it, was forty cubits long.
Read Chapter 6
Bede
AD 735
We have said that the temple itself before the doors of the oracle was a type of the present church. Hence it was rightly forty cubits long, for this number is often used to signify the present labor of the faithful, just as the number fifty stands for the rest and peace to come. For the number ten contains the precepts, the observance of which leads to life. Likewise the number ten signifies that very eternal life that we desire and for which we live. But the world in which we strive to attain that life is a square. Hence too the psalmist, foreseeing the church that was to be assembled from the nations said, “He has gathered them out of the countries from the rising and from the setting of the sun, from the north and from the sea.” Now ten multiplied by four makes forty. Hence the people liberated from Egypt as a figure of the present church were subjected to many hardships for forty years in the desert, but at the same time they were also regaled with heavenly bread, and in this way ...
