At the heart of the Beit Hamikdash was the "Holy of Holies," the chamber that housed the "ark of testament" containing the divine communication to man; a place so suffused with the holiness of G-d that it was "spaceless space" - not physical, not metaphysical, but neither and both in one, reflecting G-d's simultaneous transcendence of, and immanence within, the physical reality.
The Holy of Holies measured twenty cubits (that's approx. 30 feet) by twenty cubits.
In its center stood the ark, also of a specified size, "two cubits and a half should be its length, a cubit and a half its breadth, and a cubit and a half its height". Nevertheless, the ark did not occupy any of the space of the chamber that housed it, so that the distance from each of the ark's outer walls to the interior walls of the Holy of Holies was ten cubits.
(So it measured 10 cubits from each side of the Ark to the wall of the room, yet it was only 20 cubits from one end of the room to the other!!)
In the words of the Talmud "The area of the Ark was not part of the measurement." This was more than mere transcendence of the physical: the ark did possess physical area, indeed, its spatial dimensions were prescribed by law and integral to its status as a holy object, yet at the same time, it did not occupy any of the area of the Holy of Holies. Thus it demonstrated the truth that G-d simultaneously transcends and pervades the parameters of His creation.
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