Bible Dictionary
Parlour
A parlour was a chamber used for rest, receiving guests, or holding an audience. Eglon’s summer room was an upper chamber, while other references concern a guest room and temple chambers.
Definition
A parlour was a chamber for receiving an audience, resting, or accommodating guests. Eglon’s summer parlour was an upper room built on a roof, with open windows for cooling and an outside entrance. Other uses refer to a guest chamber and to small chambers connected with the temple.
Biblical Usage
Eglon was resting in his summer parlour when Ehud was admitted and delivered his message. The term also describes the guest chamber used for sacrificial feasts and the inner chambers associated with Solomon’s temple.
Historical Background
The summer parlour resembled a kiosk, a small roof chamber designed to catch the breeze. The temple parlours may have been side chambers built around parts of the temple, though they may also have referred to the porch and holy place.
Scripture References
Related Figures
Historical Bible Dictionaries
Easton's Bible Dictionary
(from the Fr. parler, “to speak”) denotes an “audience chamber,” but that is not the import of the Hebrew word so rendered. It corresponds to what the Turks call a kiosk, as in Judg. 3:20 (the “summer parlour”), or as in the margin of the Revised Version (“the upper chamber of cooling”), a small room built on the roof of the house, with open windows to catch the breeze, and having a door communicating with the outside by which persons seeking an audience may be admitted. While Eglon was resting in such a parlour, Ehud, under pretence of having a message from God to him, was admitted into his presence, and murderously plunged his dagger into his body (21, 22). The “inner parlours” in 1 Chr. 28:11 were the small rooms or chambers which Solomon built all round two sides and one end of the temple (1 Kings 6:5), “side chambers;” or they may have been, as some think, the porch and the holy place. In 1 Sam. 9:22 the Revised Version reads “guest chamber,” a chamber at the high place specially used for sacrificial feasts.