_THE TEMPLE._
1 KINGS v., vi., vii.
"And his next son, for wealth and wisdom famed,
The clouded Ark of God, till then in tents
Wandering, shall in a glorious temple enshrine."
_Paradise Lost_, xii. 340.
After the destructive battle of Aphek, in which the Philistines
had defeated Israel, slain the two sons of Eli, and taken captive
the Ark of God, they had inflicted a terrible vengeance on the old
sanctuary at Shiloh. They had burnt the young men in the fire,
and slain the priests with the sword, and no widows were left to
make lamentation.[233] It is true that, terrified by portents and
diseases, the Philistines after a time restored the Ark, and the
Tabernacle of the wilderness with its brazen altar still gave
sacredness to the great high place at Gibeon, to which apparently
it had been removed.[234] Nevertheless, the old worship seems
to have languished till it received a new and powerful impulse
from the religious earnestness of David. He had the mind of a
patriot-statesman as well as of a soldier, and he felt that a nation
is nothing without its sacred memories. Those memories clustered
round the now-discredited Ark. Its capture, and its parade as a
trophy of victory in the shrine of Dagon, had robbed it of all its
superstitious prestige as a fetish; but, degraded as it had been, it
still continued to be the one inestimably precious historic relic
which enshrined the memories of the deliverance of Israel from Egypt,
and the dawn of its heroic age.
As soon as David had given to his people the boon of a unique capital,
nothing could be more natural than the wish to add sacredness to
the glory of the capital by making it the centre of the national
worship. According to the Chronicles, David--feeling it a reproach
that he himself should dwell in palaces ceiled with cedar and painted
with vermilion while the Ark of God dwelt between curtains--had made
unheard-of preparations to build a house for God. But it had been
decreed unfit that the sanctuary should be built by a man whose hands
were red with the blood of many wars, and he had received the promise
that the great work should be accomplished by his son.[235]
Into that work Solomon threw himself with hearty zeal in the
month Zif[236] of the fourth year of his reign, when his kingdom
was consolidated.[237] It commanded all his sympathies as an
artist, a lover of magnificence, and a ruler bent on the work of
centralisation. It was a task to which he was bound by the solemn
exhortation of his father, and he felt, doubtless, its political as
well as its religious importance. With his sincere desire to build to
God's glory was mingled a prophetic conviction that his task would be
fraught with immense issues for the future of his people and of all
the world. The presence of the Temple left its impress on the very
name of Jerusalem. Although it has nothing to do with the Temple or
with Solomon, it became known to the heathen world as Hierosolyma,
which, as we see from Eupolemos (Euseb., _Præp. Evang._, ix. 34), the
Gentile world supposed to mean "the Temple (_Hieron_) of Solomon."
The materials already provided were of priceless value. David had
consecrated to God the spoils which he had won from conquered
kings. We must reject, as the exaggerations of national vanity, the
monstrous numbers which now stand in the text of the chronicler; but
a king whose court was simple and inexpensive was quite able to amass
treasures of gold and silver, brass and iron, precious marbles and
onyx stones. Solomon had only to add to these sacred stores.[238]
He inherited the friendship which David had enjoyed, with Hiram,
King of Tyre, who, according to the strange phrase of the Vatican
Septuagint, sent his servants "to anoint" Solomon. The friendliest
overtures passed between the two kings in letters, to which Josephus
appeals as still extant. A commercial treaty was made by which
Solomon engaged to furnish the Tyrian king with annual revenues of
wheat, barley, and oil,[239] and Hiram put at Solomon's disposal the
skilled labour of an army of Sidonian wood-cutters and artisans.[240]
The huge trunks of cedar and cypress were sent rushing down the
heights of Lebanon by schlittage, and laboriously dragged by road or
river to the shore. There they were constructed into immense rafts,
which were floated a hundred miles along the coast to Joppa, where
they were again dragged with enormous toil for thirty-five miles
up the steep and rocky roads to Jerusalem. For more than twenty
years, while Solomon was building the Temple and his various royal
constructions, Jerusalem became a hive of ceaseless and varied
industry. Its ordinary inhabitants must have been swelled by an army
of Canaanite serfs and Phœnician artisans to whom residences were
assigned in Ophel. There lived the hewers and bevellers of stone;
the cedar-cutters of Gebal or Biblos;[241] the cunning workmen in
gold or brass; the bronze-casters who made their moulds in the clay
ground of the Jordan valley; the carvers and engravers; the dyers who
stained wool with the purple of the murex, and the scarlet dye of the
trumpet fish; the weavers and embroiderers of fine linen. Every class
of labourer was put into requisition, from the descendants of the
Gibeonite _Nethinim_, who were rough hewers of wood and drawers of
water, to the trained artificers whose beautiful productions were the
wonder of the world. The "father," or master-workman, of the whole
community was a half-caste, who also bore the name of Hiram, and was
the son of a woman of Naphtali by a Tyrian father.[242]
Some writers have tried to minimise Solomon's work as a builder, and
have spoken of the Temple as an exceedingly insignificant structure
which would not stand a moment's comparison with the smallest and
humblest of our own cathedrals. Insignificant in size it certainly
was, but we must not forget its costly splendour, the remote age in
which the work was achieved, and the truly stupendous constructions
which the design required. Mount Moriah was selected as a site
hallowed by the tradition of Abraham's sacrifice, and more recently
by David's vision of the Angel of the Pestilence with his drawn sword
on the threshing-floor of the Jebusite Prince Araunah.[243] But to
utilise this doubly consecrated area involved almost superhuman
difficulties, which would have been avoided if the loftier but less
suitable height of the Mount of Olives could have been chosen. The
rugged summit had to be enlarged to a space of five hundred yards
square, and this level was supported by Cyclopean walls, which have
long been the wonder of the world.[244] The magnificent wall on the
east side, known as "the Jews' wailing-place," is doubtless the work
of Solomon, and after outlasting "the drums and tramplings of a
hundred triumphs," it remains to this day in uninjured massiveness.
One of the finely bevelled stones is 38-1/2 feet long and 7 feet
high, and weighs more than 100 tons. These vast stones were hewn from
a quarry above the level of the wall, and lowered by rollers down
an inclined plane. Part of the old wall rises 30 feet above the
present level of the soil, but a far larger part of the height lies
hidden 80 feet under the accumulated _débris_ of the often captured
city. At the south-west angle, by Robinson's arch, three pavements
were discovered, one beneath the other, showing the gradual filling
up of the valley; and on the lowest of these were found the broken
_voussoirs_ of the arch. In Solomon's day the whole of this mighty
wall was visible. On one of the lowest stones have been discovered
the Phœnician paint-marks which indicated where each of the huge
masses, so carefully dressed, edge-drafted, and bevelled, was to
be placed in the structure. The caverns, quarries, water storages,
and subterranean conduits hewn out of the solid rock, over which
Jerusalem is built, could only have been constructed at the cost of
immeasurable toil. They would be wonderful even with our infinitely
more rapid methods and more powerful agencies; but when we remember
that they were made three thousand years ago we do not wonder that
their massiveness has haunted the imagination of so many myriads of
visitors from every nation.
It was perhaps from his Egyptian father-in-law that Solomon, to his
own cost, learnt the secret of forced labour which alone rendered
such undertakings possible. In their Egyptian bondage the forefathers
of Israel had been fatally familiar with the ugly word _Mas_, the
labour wrung from them by hard task-masters.[245] In the reign of
Solomon it once more became only too common on the lips of the
burdened people.[246]
Four classes were subject to it.
1. The lightest labour was required from the native freeborn
Israelites (_ezrach_). They were not regarded as bondsmen
(עֲבָדִים), yet 30,000 of these were required in relays of 10,000 to
work, one month in every three, in the forest of Lebanon.[247]
2. There were the strangers, or resident aliens (_Gerim_), such as the
Phœnicians and Giblites, who were Hiram's subjects and worked for pay.
3. There were three classes of slaves--those taken in war, or sold
for debt, or home-born.
4. Lowest and most wretched of all, there were the vassal Canaanites
(_Toshabim_), from whom were drawn those 70,000 burden-bearers, and
80,000 quarry-men, the Helots of Palestine, who were placed under the
charge of 3600 Israelite officers. The blotches of smoke are still
visible on the walls and roofs of the subterranean quarries where
these poor serfs, in the dim torchlight and suffocating air, "laboured
without reward, perished without pity, and suffered without redress."
The sad narrative reveals to us, and modern research confirms, that the
purple of Solomon had a very seamy side, and that an abyss of misery
heaved and moaned under the glittering surface of his splendour.[248]
Jerusalem during the twenty years occupied by his building must have
presented the disastrous spectacle of task-masters, armed with rods
and scourges, enforcing the toil of gangs of slaves, as we see
them represented on the tombs of Egypt and the palaces of Assyria.
The sequel shows the jealousies and discontents even of the native
Israelites, who felt themselves to be "scourged with whips and laden
with heavy burdens." They were bondmen in all but name, for purposes
which bore very little on their own welfare. But the curses of the
wretched aborigines must have been deeper, if not so loud. They were
torn from such homes as the despotism of conquest still left to them,
and were forced to hopeless and unrewarded toil for the alien worship
and hateful palaces of their masters. Five centuries later we find a
pitiable trace of their existence in the 392 _Hierodouloi_, menials
lower even than the enslaved _Nethinim_, who are called "_sons of the
slaves of Solomon_"--the dwindling and miserable remnant of that vast
levy of Palestinian serfs.
Apart from the lavish costliness of its materials the actual Temple
was architecturally a poor and commonplace structure. It was quite
small--only 90 feet long, 35 feet broad, and 45 feet high. It was
meant for the symbolic habitation of God, not for the worship of
great congregations. It only represented the nascent art and limited
resources of a tenth-rate kingdom, and was totally devoid alike of
the pure and stately beauty of the Parthenon and the awe-inspiring
grandeur of the great Egyptian temples with their avenues of obelisks
and sphinxes and their colossal statues of deities and kings
"Staring right on with calm, eternal eyes."
When Justinian boastfully exclaimed, as he looked at his church, "_I
have vanquished thee, O Solomon_,"[249] and when the Khalif Omar,
pointing to the Dome of the Rock, murmured, "_Behold, a greater than
Solomon is here,_" they forgot the vast differences between them and
the Jewish king in the epoch at which they lived and the resources
which they could command. The Temple was built in "majestic silence."
"No workman's axe, no ponderous hammer rung,
Like some tall palm the noiseless fabric sprung."
This was due to religious reverence. It could be easily accomplished,
because each stone and beam was carefully prepared to be fitted in
its exact place before it was carried up the Temple hill.
The elaborate particulars furnished us of the measurements of Solomon's
Temple are too late in age, too divergent in particulars, too
loosely strung together, too much mingled with later reminiscences,
and altogether too architecturally insufficient, to enable us to
re-construct the exact building, or even to form more than a vague
conception of its external appearance. Both in Kings and Chronicles the
notices, as Keil says, are "incomplete extracts made independently of
one another," and vague in essential details. Critics and architects
have attempted to reproduce the Temple on Greek,[250] Egyptian,[251]
and Phœnician[252] models, so entirely unlike each other as to show
that we can arrive at no certainty.[253] It is, however, most probable
that, alike in ornamentation and conception, the building was
predominantly Phœnician.[254] Severe in outline, gorgeous in detail,
it was more like the Temple of Venus-Astarte at Paphos than any other.
Fortunately the details, apart from such dim symbolism as we may
detect in them, have no religious importance, but only an historic and
antiquarian interest.[255]
The Temple--called _Baith_ (בַּית) or _Hêkâl_ (הֵיכָל)--was
surrounded by the thickly clustered houses of the Levites, and by
porticoes[256] through which the precincts were entered by numerous
gates of wood overlaid with brass. A grove of olives, palms, cedars,
and cypresses, the home of many birds, probably adorned the outer
court.[257] This court was shut from the "higher court,"[258]
afterwards known as "the Court of the Priests," by a partition of
three rows of hewn stones surmounted by a cornice of cedar beams. In
the higher court, which was reached by a flight of steps, was the
vast new altar of brass, 15 feet high and 30 feet long, of which the
hollow was filled with earth and stones, and of which the blazing
sacrifices were visible in the court below.[259] Here also stood the
huge molten sea, borne on the backs of twelve brazen oxen, of which
three faced to each quarter of the heavens.[260] It was in the form
of a lotus blossom, and its rim was hung with three hundred wild
gourds in bronze, cast in two rows. Its reservoir of eight hundred
and eighty gallons of water was for the priestly ablutions necessary
in the butcheries of sacrifice, and its usefulness was supplemented
by ten brazen caldrons on wheels, five on each side, adorned like
"the sea," with pensile garlands and cherubic emblems.[261] Whether
"the brazen serpent of the wilderness," to which the children of
Israel burnt incense down to the days of Hezekiah, was in that court
or in the Temple we do not know.
On the western side of this court, facing the rising sun, stood the
Temple itself, on a platform elevated some sixteen feet from the
ground. Its side chambers were "lean-to" annexes (Heb., ribs; LXX.,
μέλαθρα; Vulg., _tabulata_), in three stories, all accessible by one
central entrance on the outside. Their beams rested on rebatements
in the thickness of the wall, and the highest was the broadest.
Above these were windows "skewed and closed," as the margin of the
A.V. says; or "broad within and narrow without"; or, as it should
rather be rendered, "with closed crossbeams," that is, with immovable
lattices, which could not be opened and shut, but which allowed the
escape of the smoke of lamps and the fumes of incense. These chambers
must also have had windows. They were used to store the garments of
the priests and other necessary paraphernalia of the Temple service,
but as to all details we are left completely in the dark.
Of the external aspect of the building in Solomon's day we know
nothing. We cannot even tell whether it had one level roof, or
whether the Holy of Holies was like a lower chancel at the end of
it; nor whether the roof was flat or, as the Rabbis say, ridged;
nor whether the outer surface of the three-storeyed chambers which
surrounded it was of stone, or planked with cedar, or overlaid with
plinths of gold and silver;[262] nor whether, in any case, it was
ornamented with carvings or left blank; nor whether the cornices
only were decorated with open flowers like the Assyrian rosettes.
Nor do we know with certainty whether it was supported within by
pillars[263] or not. In the state of the records as they have come
down to us, all accurate or intelligible descriptions are slurred
over by compilers who had no technical knowledge and whose main
desire was to impress their countrymen with the truth that the holy
building was--as indeed for its day it was--"exceeding magnifical of
fame and of glory throughout all countries."
In front of or just within the porch were two superb pillars,
regarded as miracles of Tyrian art, made of fluted bronze, 27 feet
high and 18 feet thick. Their capitals of 7-1/2 feet in height
resembled an open lotos blossom, surrounded by double wreaths of two
hundred pensile bronze pomegranates, supporting an abacus, carved
with conventional lily work. Both pomegranates and lilies had a
symbolic meaning.[264] The pillars were, for unknown reasons, called
Jachin and Boaz.[265] Much about them is obscure. It is not even
known whether they stood detached like obelisks, or formed Propylæa;
or supported the architraves of the porch itself, or were a sort of
gateway, surmounted by a _melathron_ with two _epithemas_, like a
Japanese or Indian _toran_.
The porch (_Olam_), which was of the same height as the house (_i.e._,
45 feet high),[266] was hung with the gilded shields of Hadadezer's
soldiers which David had taken in battle,[267] and perhaps also with
consecrated armour, like the sword of Goliath,[268] to show that "unto
the Lord belongeth our shield" (Psalm lxxxix. 18), and that "the
shields of the earth belong unto God" (Psalm xlvii. 9).
A door of cypress wood, of two leaves, made in four squares, 7-1/2
feet broad and high, turning on golden hinges overlaid with gold, and
carved with palm branches and festoons of lilies and pomegranates,
opened from the porch into the main apartment. This was the _Mikdash_
(מִקְדָּשׁ), Holy Place, or Sanctuary, and sometimes specially called
in Chaldee "the Palace" (_Hêkâl_, or _Bîrah_) (Ezra v, 14, 15,
etc.). Before it, as in the Tabernacle, hung an embroidered curtain
(_Māsak_). It was probably supported by four pillars on each side. In
the interspaces were five tables on each side, overlaid with gold,
and each encircled by a wreath of gold (_zêr_). On these were placed
the cakes of shewbread.[269] At the end of the chamber, on each side
the door of the Holiest, were five golden candlesticks with chains
of wreathed gold hanging between them. In the centre of the room
stood the golden altar of incense, and somewhere (we must suppose)
the golden candlestick of the Tabernacle, with its seven branches
ornamented with lilies, pomegranates, and calices of almond flowers.
Nothing which was in the darkness of the Holiest was visible except
the projecting golden staves with which the Ark had been carried to
its place. The Holy Place itself was lighted by narrow slits.
The entrance to the Holiest, the _Debir_, or oracle,[270] which
corresponded to the Greek _adytum_, was through a two-leaved door of
olive wood, 6 feet high and broad, overlaid with gold, and carved
with palms, cherubim, and open flowers. The partition was of cedar
wood. The floor of the whole house was of cedar overlaid with gold.
The interior of this "Oracle," as it was called--for the title "Holy
of Holies" is of later origin--was, at any rate in the later Temples,
concealed by an embroidered veil of blue, purple, and crimson, looped
up with golden chains.
The Oracle, like the New Jerusalem of the Apocalypse, was a perfect
cube, 30 feet broad and long and high, covered with gold, but
shrouded in perpetual and unbroken darkness.[271] No light was ever
visible in it save such as was shed by the crimson gleam of the
thurible of incense which the high priest carried into it once a
year on the Great Day of Atonement.[272] In the centre of the floor
must apparently have risen the mass of rock which is still visible
in the Mosque of Omar, from which it is called _Al Sakhra_, "the
Dome of the Rock." Tradition pointed to it as the spot on which
Abraham had laid for sacrifice the body of his son Isaac, when the
angel restrained the descending knife. It was also the site of
Araunah's threshing-floor, and had been therefore hallowed by two
angelic apparitions.[273] On it was deposited with solemn ceremony
the awful palladium of the Ark, which had been preserved through
the wanderings and wars of the Exodus and the troublous days of the
Judges.[274] It contained the most sacred possession of the nation,
the most priceless treasure which Israel guarded for the world. This
treasure was the Two Tables of the Ten Commandments, graven (in the
anthropomorphic language of the ancient record) by the actual finger
of God; the tables which Moses had shattered on the rocks of Mount
Sinai as he descended to the backsliding people.[275] The Ark was
covered with its old "Propitiatory," or "Mercy-seat," overshadowed
by the wings of two small cherubim; but Solomon had prepared for its
reception a new and far more magnificent covering, in the form of
two colossal cherubim, 15 feet high, of which each expanded wing was
7-1/2 feet long. These wings touched the outer walls of the Oracle,
and also touched each other over the centre of the Ark.
Such was the Temple.
It was the "forum, fortress, university, and sanctuary" of the Jews,
and the transitory emblem of the Church of Christ's kingdom. It was
destined to occupy a large share in the memory, and even in the
religious development, of the world, because it became the central
point round which crystallised the entire history of the Chosen People.
The kings of Judah are henceforth estimated with almost exclusive
reference to the relation in which they stood to the centralised
worship of Jehovah. The Spanish kings who built and decorated the
Escurial caught the spirit of Jewish annals when, in the Court of the
Kings, they reared the six colossal statues of David the originator, of
Solomon the founder, of Jehoshaphat, Hezekiah, Josiah, and Manasseh the
restorers or purifiers of the Temple worship.[276]
It required the toil of 300,000 men for twenty years to build one of
the pyramids. It took two hundred years to build and four hundred
to embellish the great Temple of Artemis of the Ephesians. It took
more than five centuries to give to Westminster Abbey its present
form. Solomon's Temple only took seven and a half years to build;
but, as we shall see, its objects were wholly different from those
of the great shrines which we have mentioned. The wealth lavished
upon it was such that its dishes, bowls, cups, even its snuffers
and snuffer trays, and its meanest utensils, were of pure gold. The
massiveness of its substructions, the splendour of its materials, the
artistic skill displayed by the Tyrian workmen in all its details
and adornments, added to the awful sense of its indwelling Deity,
gave it an imperishable fame. Needing but little repair, it stood
for more than four centuries. Succeeded as it was by the Temples of
Zerubbabel and of Herod, it carried down till seventy years after
the Christian era the memory of the Tabernacle in the wilderness, of
which it preserved the general outline, though it exactly doubled all
the proportions and admitted many innovations.[277]
The dedication ceremony was carried out with the utmost pomp. It
required nearly a year to complete the necessary preparations, and
the ceremony with its feasts occupied fourteen days, which were
partly coincident with the autumn Feast of Tabernacles.[278]
The dedication falls into three great acts. The first was the removal
of the Ark to its new home (1 Kings viii. 1-11); then followed the
speech and the prayer of Solomon (vv. 12-61); and, finally, the great
holocaust was offered (vv. 62-66).
The old Tabernacle, or what remained of it, with its precious
heirlooms, was carried by priests and Levites from the high place at
Gibeon, which was henceforth abandoned.[279] This procession was met
by another, far more numerous and splendid, consisting of all the
princes, nobles, and captains, which brought the Ark from the tent
erected for it on Mount Zion by David forty years before.
The Israelites had flocked to Jerusalem in countless multitudes,
under their sheykhs and emîrs[280] from the border of Hamath on the
Orontes,[281] north of Mount Lebanon, to the Wady el-Areesh.[282]
The king, in his most regal state, accompanied the procession, and
the Ark passed through myriads of worshippers crowded in the outer
court, from the tent on Mount Zion into the darkness of the Oracle
on Mount Moriah, where it continued, unseen perhaps by any human eye
but that of the high priest once a year, until it was carried away by
Nebuchadnezzar to Babylon.[283] To indicate that this was to be its
rest for ever, the staves, contrary to the old law, were drawn out
of the golden rings through which they ran, in order that no human
hand might touch the sacred emblem itself when it was borne on the
shoulders of the Levitic priests. "And there they are unto this day,"
writes the compiler from his ancient record, long after Temple and
Ark had ceased to exist.[284]
The king is the one predominant figure, and the high priest is not
once mentioned. Nathan is only mentioned by the heathen historian
Eupolemos. Visible to the whole vast multitude, Solomon stood in the
inner court on a high scaffolding of brass. Then came a burst of
music and psalmody from the priests and musicians, robed in white
robes, who densely thronged the steps of the great altar.[285]
They held in their hands their glittering harps and cymbals, and
psalteries in their precious frames of red sandal wood, and twelve of
their number rent the air with the blast of their silver trumpets as
Solomon, in this supreme hour of his prosperity, shone forth before
his people in all his manly beauty.
At the sight of that stately figure in its gorgeous robes the song of
praise was swelled by innumerable voices, and, to crown all, a blaze
of sudden glory wrapped the Temple and the whole scene in heaven's
own splendour (2 Chron. v. 13, 14). First, the king, standing with
his back to the people, broke out into a few words of prophetic song.
Then, turning to the multitude, he blessed them--he, and not the
high priest--and briefly told them the history and significance of
this house of God, warning them faithfully that the Temple after all
was but the _emblem_ of God's presence in the midst of them, and
that the Most High dwelleth not in temples made with hands, neither
is worshipped with men's hands as though He needed anything. After
this he advanced to the altar, and kneeling on his knees (2 Chron.
vi. 13)--a most unusual attitude among the Jews, who, down to the
latest ages, usually stood up to pray--he prayed with the palms of
his hands upturned to heaven, as though to receive in deep humility
its outpoured benefits. The prayer, as here given, consists of an
introduction, seven petitions, and a conclusion. It was a passionate
entreaty that God would hear, both individually and nationally, both
in prosperity and in adversity, the supplications of His people, and
even of strangers, who should either pray in the courts of that His
house, or should make it the _Kibleh_ of their devotions.[286]
After the dedicatory prayer both the outer and the inner court of the
Temple reeked and swam with the blood of countless victims--victims
so numerous that the great brazen altar became wholly insufficient
for them.[287] At the close of the entire festival they departed to
their homes with joy and gladness.[288]
But whatever the Temple might or might not be to the people, the
king used it as his own chapel. Three times a year, we are told, he
offered--and for all that appears, offered with his own hand without
the intervention of any priest--burnt offerings and peace offerings
upon the altar. Not only this, but he actually "burnt incense therewith
upon the altar which was before the Lord,"--the very thing which
was regarded as so deadly a crime in the case of King Uzziah.[289]
Throughout the history of the monarchy, the priests, with scarcely any
exception, seem to have been passive tools in the hands of the kings.
Even under Rehoboam--much more under Ahaz and Manasseh--the sacred
precincts were defiled with nameless abominations, to which, so far as
we know, the priests offered no resistance.
FOOTNOTES:
[233] Psalm lxxviii. 58-64.
[234] According to 2 Chron. i. 3.
[235] David's suggestion does not seem to have been received
favourably at first (2 Sam. vii. 1-17). The chronicler (1 Chron.
xxviii. 19) indulges in the amazing hyperbole that David had been
made to understand all the works of the pattern of the Temple "_in
writing_ from the hand of the Lord."
[236] The ancient Israelites named their months from the seasons,
as did the Canaanites. Only four of those old names are preserved
in the Bible: _Zif_, "brightness" (comp. _Floreal_, _Lenz_); _Bul_,
"rain-month" (_Pluviose_); _Abib_, "corn-ear month"; _Ethanim_,
"fruit-month" (_Fructidor_).
[237] In 1 Kings vi. 1 we read "in the 480th year after the children
of Israel were come out of the land of Egypt." This may possibly be
a later gloss. The LXX., Origen, Josephus, etc., omit the words,
and the Old Testament does not, as a rule, date events by epochs.
Further, the date is full of difficulties, though our received
chronology is based on it. It was perhaps arrived at after the Exile,
by counting backwards from the Decree of Cyrus, B.C. 535. See note at
the end of the volume.
[238] 1 Chron. xxii. 14 says that David (comp. xxviii., xxix.) "with
much labour" (A.V., "in my trouble," 1 Chron. xxii. 14) bequeathed to
Solomon 100,000 talents of gold and 100,000 talents of silver! This
impossible number is very considerably reduced in 1 Chron. xxix. 4,
where the mention of _darics_ shows an author living in the captivity.
[239] Comp. Ezek. xxvii. 17; Acts xii. 20.
[240] According to Tatian, _Orat. ad Græc._, p. 171, Solomon married a
daughter of Hiram. Hiram, like the Queen of Sheba, acknowledges Jehovah
as the (local) God of Israel. He was the son of Abibaal, and, according
to Menander (a Greek historian of Ephesus about B.C. 300, who consulted
Tyrian records), he began to reign at nineteen, and reigned thirty-four
years. Josephus thinks that there were two successive Hirams.
[241] _Giblim_, 1 Kings v. 18, where "and the stone-squarers" should
be "and especially the men of Gebal." LXX., Alex., οἱ Βίβλιοι; Vulg.,
_Giblii_, Comp. Ezek. xxvii. 9, Psalm lxxxiii. 7, "The ancients of
Gebal and the wise thereof were in thee." It is now Jebeil, between
Beyrout and Tripoli. The Phœnician and Sidonian artisans were famous
from the earliest antiquity for metal-work, embroidery, dyes,
ship-building, and the fine arts (Hom., _Il._, xxiii. 743; _Od._, iv.
614-18, xv. 425; Herod., iii. 19, vii. 23, 96, etc.).
[242] 2 Chron. ii. 13, iv. 16, where "a cunning man of Huram my
father's" should be "even Huram, my father," _i.e._, master-workman
or deviser (comp. Gen. xlv. 8). In Chronicles he is called the son
of a Danite mother. Here we have another of the manipulations used
by later Jewish tradition to get rid of what they disliked; for in
Eupolemos (Euseb., _Præp. Evang._, ix. 34) Hiram is said to belong to
the family of David. "Quite a little romance," as Wellhausen says,
"has been constructed out of the fact that the chronicler assigns
his mother to the tribe of Dan; but it is not worth repeating, being
a mass of hypotheses." To the dislike of Sidonian and semi-Sidonian
influence, we perhaps owe the notion that David had already received
a design from the hand of God Himself (1 Chron. xxviii. 11-19)
(Ewald, iii. 227). Jerome mentions the Jewish fable that the artist
Hiram was of the family of Aholiab, the artist of the wilderness.
[243] "Araunah the king" (2 Sam. xxiv. 23). The Temple Mount was
usually called the "Mount of the House." It is only called Mount
Moriah in 2 Chron. iii. 1. It cannot be regarded as certain that "the
land of Moriah" (Gen. xxii. 2) is identical with it.
[244] "The present platform is 1521 feet long on the east, 940 on the
south, 1617 on the west, 1020 on the north." Bartlett, _Walks about
Jerusalem_, pp. 161-70; Williams, _The Holy City_, pp. 315-62. Kugle,
_Gesch. der Baukunst_, p. 125. The excellent stone was supplied by
quarries at Jerusalem itself. Comp. "Cavati sub terra montes." (Tac.,
_Hist._, v. 12). It may have been extended by Justinian when he built
his church. See Ewald, iii. 232, "The Mount of the Temple was 500
yards square"; _Middoth_, c. 2. Comp. Ezek. xiii. 15-20, xlv. 2;
Josephus, _Antt._, XV. xi. 3.
[245] Exod. i., ii.
[246] 1 Kings iv. 6, v. 13, 14, 17, 18, ix. 15, 21, xii. 18.
[247] Ewald thinks that it was only "at the beginning" that
Solomon, like Sesostris (Diod. Sic., _Hist._, i. 56), could boast
that his work was done without exacting bitter labour from his own
countrymen. But 1 Kings ix. 22 shows that the king's opinion on
this subject differed widely from that of his people (1 Kings xi.
28, xii. 3); for we are told that he did not make _servants_ of the
children of Israel, but used them as military officers (_Sarim_) and
chariot-warriors (_Shalishim_, τριστάται) and knights. It required a
little euphemism to gild the real state of affairs. The details of
numbers in the Books of Chronicles differ from those in the Kings.
[248] 1 Kings v. 13, ix. 22; 2 Chron. viii. 9. (Omitted in the LXX.)
[249] In token of this defeat of Solomon he was represented in a
statue outside the church leaning his hand on his cheek with a
gesture of sorrow.
[250] Professor Williams, _Prolus. Architectonicæ_.
[251] Professor Hoskins (_Enc. Brit._); Canina, _Jewish Antiquities_;
Thrupp, _Ancient Jerusalem_; Count de Vogüé, _Le Temple de Jérusalem_.
[252] Fergusson, _Temples of the Jews_; E. Robbins, _Temple of Solomon_.
[253] Eupolemos (Euseb., _Præp. Evang._, ix. 30) and Alex. Polyhistor
(Clem. Alex., _Strom._, i. 21) idly talk of help furnished to Solomon
in building the Temple by an Egyptian King Vaphres, and of letters
interchanged between them. Vaphres seems to be a mere anachronism for
Hophra.
[254] The Phœnician style may, however, have been borrowed in part
from Egypt.
[255] I have spoken of the Temple in _Solomon and his Times_ (Men of
the Bible), and have there furnished some illustrations. The following
special authorities may be referred to. Stade, i. 311-57, Friederich,
_Tempel und Palast Salomo's_ (Innsbruck, 1887); Chipiez et Perrot, _Le
Temple de Jérusalem_ (Paris, 1889); Warren, _Underground Jerusalem_;
Wilson and Warren, _Recov. of Jerusalem_ (1871).
[256] _Parbarim_ (2 Kings xxiii. 11). Comp. 1 Chron. xxvi. 18 (A.V.,
"suburbs"; R.V., "precincts" and "Parbar"). Descriptions of the Temple,
imperfect, and not always accordant with each other, are found in 1
Kings v.-vii.; 2 Chron. ii.-v.; Josephus, _Antt._, VIII. iii. 7, 8.
[257] As we infer from Psalms lii. 8, lxxxiv. 3, lxxvi. 2 (where
"tabernacle" should be "covert"). Eupolemos (_ap._ Euseb., _Præp.
Evang._, etc.). Scattered passages of the Talmud which refer mainly
to Herod's Temple are full of extravagances.
[258] Jer. xxxvi. 10.
[259] 2 Chron. iv. 1. This could not have been the brazen altar of
the wilderness, the fate of which we do not know. It was far larger,
but probably on the same model, except that steps were forbidden as
an approach to the altar of the Tabernacle (Exod. xx. 24-26). It is
difficult to reconcile the description of the brazen altar with the
distinct prohibition of that passage. Comp. Ezek. xliii. 17.
[260] The huge stone vase of Amathus was borne on a bull (Duncker,
ii. 184). Josephus says that in making these oxen Solomon broke the
law (_Antt._, VIII. vii. 5), as well as by the lions on his throne.
The Romans called huge vases _lacus_.
[261] The descriptions of these lavers, whether in the Hebrew, the
LXX., or Josephus, are not intelligible, and are wholly unimportant.
[262] Like the palace of Ecbatana (Polyb., x. 27, 10; Herod., i.
98), and possibly the upper stories of the great temple of Bel at
Birs-Nimrud (Borsippa).
[263] In 1 Kings x. 12 "pillars" should be "a rail" or "balustrade."
Heb., מִסְעָד; LXX., ὑποστηρίγματα; Vulg., _fulcra_.
[264] Lilies symbolised beauty and innocence; pomegranates good
works (so the Chaldee in Cant. iv. 13, vi. 11, Bähr, _Symbol._, ii.
122). Raphael crowns his Theology with pomegranates, Giotto places a
pomegranate in the hand of his youthful Dante, and Giovanni Bellini
in the hand of the Virgin Mary.
[265] Some suppose that the words imply "He will establish" (Jachin)
"in strength" (Boaz). "After some favourite persons of the time,
perhaps young sons of Solomon," says Ewald, very improbably. LXX. (2
Chron. iii. 17), Κατόρθωσις and Ἰσχύς. See a description of these
pillars in Jer. lii. 21-23.
[266] Some writers have supplied the Temple with a porch 180 feet
high, misled by the astounding method of the chronicler of adding the
four sides into the total. Thus, he tells us that the wings of the
cherubim were 30 feet long, meaning that each single wing was 7-1/2
feet long (2 Chron. iii. 11). Josephus does the same in telling us
the height of the Temple wall.
[267] The ground plans of most ancient temples were alike.
[268] 2 Sam. viii. 7; 1 Chron. xviii. 7.
[269] So 2 Chron. iv. 8. But it would seem from 1 Kings vii. 48; 2
Chron. xiii. 11, xxix. 18 that only one table and one candlestick
were ordinarily used.
[270] St. Jerome rendered _debir_ by _oraculum_, but some derive it
from the Arabic root _dabar_, "to be behind," not from דָבָר, "to
speak" (Munk, p. 290).
[271] In Zerubbabel's and Herod's Temples there was a curtain
(_Parocheth_) before the Holiest; but we read of no such curtain
in Solomon's, except in 2 Chron. iii. 14. The fact that the staves
of the Ark were _visible_ seems to show that there was not one.
The chronicler speaks of "_the_ vail" (2 Chron. iii. 14), showing,
apparently, that there was only one; and does not mention the
_Māsak_, which hung between the Porch and the Holy Place. Except in 2
Chron. iii. 14, the only mention of either is in the "Priestly Code."
Since the Oracle had a door, one hardly sees why there should also
have been a curtain. But the whole subject is obscure, and perhaps
the chronicler is sometimes thinking of the second Temple.
[272] We read nothing, however, of any observance of the Day of
Atonement till centuries later.
[273] 2 Sam. xxiv. 25 (LXX.); 1 Chron. xxii. 1; 2 Chron. iii. 1;
Josephus, _Antt._, I. xiii. 1, VII. xiii. 4; Targum of Onkelos on
Gen. xii.
[274] "The Ark of the Lord," or "of the Testimony," or "of the
Covenant," was an oblong chest of acacia wood, overlaid with gold,
surmounted by a border of gold, and resting on four feet, to which
(A. V. corners) were attached golden rings.
[275] 1 Kings viii. 9. The pot of manna and the budded rod of Aaron
were placed before it (Exod. xvi. 34; Numb. xvii. 10), and the Book
of the Law beside it (Deut. xxxi. 26). The Mercy-seat above was
more sacred than the Ark itself (Lev. xvi. 2). It was the cover
(_Kapporeth_, ἐπίθεμα) of the Ark, and was partly formed of two
winged cherubim which gazed down upon it and faced each other.
[276] Stanley, ii. 203.
[277] The Tyrian adornments; the steps to the altar; the ten
candlesticks, and tables; the lions and oxen.
[278] The Temple was finished in the eighth month of Solomon's eleventh
year, and dedicated in the seventh month (_Ethanim_, or Tisri) of the
twelfth year. The first eight days (8th to 15th) were devoted to the
Feast of Dedication, and then from the 15th to the 22nd they kept the
Feast of Tabernacles. On the 23rd (the eighth day from the beginning
of the Feast of Tabernacles, called _'atsereth_, 2 Chron. 10) Solomon
dismissed the people. The עֲצֶרֶת, "solemn assembly," is not mentioned
in Exodus or Deuteronomy, but in Lev. xxiii. 36.
[279] It was perhaps stored away in one of the Temple chambers (2
Macc. ii. 4). The Gibeonites (_Nethinim_) were at the same time
transferred to Jerusalem. The chronicler (2 Chron. v. 6) says that
_the Levites_ took the Ark, according to the Levitic rule; but 1
Kings viii. 3 says that _the priests_ bore it, as in Deut. xxxi. 9,
and in all the præ-exilic histories (Josh. iii. 3, vi. 6; 2 Sam. xv.
24-29, etc.). W. Robertson Smith, p. 144.
[280] The sheykhs are heads of clans; the emîrs of tribes (Reuss, i.
444).
[281] The Greek Ἐπιφάνεια. Solomon seems to have had some
jurisdiction there (2 Chron. viii. 6).
[282] The torrent (_nachal_) of Egypt.
[283] The Holiest, being an unlighted cube, must always have been
dim; but, as we have seen, we have no proof that in Solomon's Temple
the entrance to it was shrouded by a curtain. In 1 Kings viii. 12,
for "The Lord said that He would dwell _in the thick darkness_," the
Targum had "_In Jerusalem_."
[284] In 1 Kings viii. 4 we read that "the priests and the Levites"
brought up to Jerusalem "the Tabernacle of the congregation." But the
LXX. only has οἱ ἱερεῖς. In 2 Chron. v. 5 the Hebrew text has "the
Levites" in some MSS., or "the priests, the Levites"--_i.e._, the
Levitic priests. For "the priests took up the ark" (1 Kings viii. 3)
the chronicler has "the Levites" (comp. Numb. iii. 31, iv. 15). It is
at least doubtful whether the distinction between priests and Levites
is older than the Priestly Code and the days of Ezekiel. Also, the
LXX. in 1 Kings viii. 4 puts "witness" for "congregation," and some
critics maintain that "congregation" (_'edah_) is post-exilic. (See
Robertson Smith, Enc. Brit., s.v. Kings). See _infra_, pp. 189, 190.
[285] Some psalm, like Psalm cxxxvi., was probably sung by alternate
choirs, but hardly in the attitude of prostration which followed the
sudden blaze of glory (2 Chron. vii. 3).
[286] "The prayer" is of extreme beauty, but it belongs by its ideas to
the seventh and not to the eleventh or tenth centuries B.C. (Ewald).
It is probably added by a later editor who took the Deuteronomic
standpoint. It is found, sometimes almost word for word, in Lev. xxvi.
and Deut. xxviii.; but there are many variations between the Hebrew
and the LXX., and Kings and Chronicles. Looking only at actual facts,
not at _a priori_ theories, we see that, as Professor Driver says
(_Contemporary Review_, Feb. 1890), "the Hebrew historians used some
freedom in attributing speeches to historical characters." Thus, both
the syntax and vocabulary, to say nothing of the thoughts of various
speeches attributed to David by the chronicler, are sometimes such as
mark the latest period in the history of the language, and are often
quite without precedent in præ-exilic literature. Some feelings which
gathered round the Temple find expression in Psalms xxiv., xxvii.,
xlii., lxxii., lxxxiv., cxxii., and in more extravagant and less
spiritual forms throughout the Talmud. _Soteh_, f. 48; _Berachoth_, f.
591; _Moed Qaton_, f. 261, etc.
[287] The Khalif Moktader sacrificed at Mecca 40,000 camels and
50,000 sheep (Burton's _Pilgrimage_, i. 318). Solomon offered burnt
offerings (_oloth_) and thank offerings (_shellamim_). No mention is
made of sin offerings; and it may be doubted whether they had any
separate existence till the days of the Exile.
[288] 1 Kings viii. 66, "went unto their _tents_," is a reminiscence
of earlier days. The chronicler (1) extends the feast to fourteen
days, according to which there is an interpolation, "and seven days,
even fourteen days," in verse 65; (2) he says that the sacrifices
were consumed by fire from heaven.
[289] 1 Kings ix. 25. The Hebrew text seems to have been tampered
with, and the allusions significantly disappear from 2 Chron. viii.
12, 13. The commentators assiduously try to clear away the difficulty.