_THE TEMPLE WORSHIP._
1 KINGS viii. 1-11.
"Trust ye not in lying words, saying, The temple of the Lord, the
temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, are these.... Behold,
ye trust in lying words, that cannot profit."--JER. vii. 4, 8.
The actual Temple building, apart from its spacious courts, was
neither for worshippers nor for priests, neither for sacrifice
nor for prayer. It existed only for symbolism and, at least in
later days, for expiation. No prayer was offered in the sanctuary.
The propitiatory was the symbol of expiation, but even after the
introduction of the Day of Atonement the atoning blood was only
carried into it once a year.
All the worship was in the outer court, and consisted mainly, (1) of
praise, and (2) of offerings. Both were prominent in the Dedication
Festival.
"It is written," said our Lord, "My house shall be called a House
of Prayer, but ye have made it a den of robbers." The quotation is
from the later Isaiah, and represents a happy advance in spiritual
religion. Among the details of the Levitic Tabernacle no mention is
made of prayer, though it was symbolised both in the incense and
in the sacrifices which have been called "unspoken prayers."[315]
"_Let my prayer be set forth as incense_," says the Psalmist,
"_and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice_." In the
New Testament we read that "the whole multitude of the people were
praying without at the time of incense." But during the whole history
of the first Temple we only hear--and that very incidentally--of
_private_ prayer in the Temple. Solomon's prayer was public, and
combined prayer with praises and benedictions. But no fragments
of Jewish liturgies have come down to us which we can with any
probability refer to the days of the kings. The Psalms which most
clearly belong to the Temple service are mainly services of praise.
In the mind of the people the _sacrifices_ were undoubtedly the main
part of the Temple ritual. This fact was specially emphasised by the
scene which marked the Festival of the Dedication.
It is difficult to imagine a scene which to our unaccustomed senses
would have been more revolting than the holocausts of a great Jewish
Festival like that of Solomon's Dedication. As a rule the daily
sacrifices, exclusively of such as might be brought by private
worshippers, were the lambs slain at morning and evening. Yet
Maimonides gives us the very material and unpoetic suggestion that the
incense used was to obviate the effluvium of animal sacrifice. The
suggestion is unworthy of the great Rabbi's ability, and is wholly
incorrect; but it reminds us of the almost terrible fact that, often
and often, the Temple must have been converted into one huge and
abhorrent _abattoir_, swimming with the blood of slaughtered victims,
and rendered intolerably repulsive by heaps of bloody skins and masses
of offal. The smell of burning flesh, the swift putrescence caused by
the tropic heat, the unlovely accompaniments of swarms of flies, and
ministers with blood-drenched robes would have been inconceivably
disagreeable to our Western training--for no one will believe the
continuous miracle invented by the Rabbis, who declare that no fly was
ever seen in the Temple, and no flesh ever grew corrupt.[316] No doubt
the brazen sea and the movable caldrons were in incessant requisition,
and there were provisions for vast storages of water. These could have
produced a very small mitigation of the accompanying pollutions during
a festival which transformed the great court of the Temple into the
reeking shambles and charnel-house of sheep and oxen "which could not
be told nor numbered for multitude."
Had such spectacles been frequent, we should surely have had to
say of the people of Jerusalem as Sir Monier Williams says of the
ancient Hindus, "The land was saturated with blood, and people became
wearied and disgusted with slaughtered sacrifices and sacrificing
priests."[317] What infinite, and what revolting labour, must have
been involved in the right burning of "the two kidneys and the fat,"
and the due disposition of the "inwards" of all these holocausts!
The groaning brazen altar, vast as it was, failed to meet the
requirements of the service, and apparently a multitude of other
altars were extemporised for the occasion.
When the festival was over God appeared to Solomon in vision, as He
had done at Gibeon. So far Solomon had not gravely or consciously
deflected from the ideal of a theocratic king. Anything which had
been worldly or mistaken in his policy--the oppression into which he
had been led, the heathen alliances which he had formed, his crowded
harem, his evident fondness for material splendour which carried with
it the peril of selfish pride--were only signs of partial knowledge
and human frailty. His heart was still, on the whole, right with
God. He was once more assured in nightly vision that his prayer and
supplication were accepted. The promise was renewed that if he would
walk in integrity and uprightness his throne should be established
for ever; but that if he or his children swerved into apostasy Israel
should be driven into exile, and, as a warning to all lands, "this
house, which I have hallowed for My name, will I cast out of My
sight, and Israel shall be a proverb and a byword among all people."
Here, then, we are brought face to face with problems which arise
from the whole system of worship in the Old Dispensation. Whatever it
was, to whatever extent it was really carried out and was not merely
theoretical, at whatever date its separate elements originated, and
however clear it is that it has utterly passed away, there must have
been certain ideas underlying it which are worthy of our study.
1. Of the element of praise, supported by music, we need say but
little. It is a natural mode of expressing the joy and gratitude
which fill the heart of man in contemplating the manifold mercies of
God. For this reason the pages of Scripture ring with religious music
from the earliest to the latest age. We are told in the Chronicles
that triumphant praise was largely introduced into the great festival
services, and that the Temple possessed a great organisation for
vocal and orchestral music. David was not only a poet, but an
inventor of musical instruments.[318] Fifteen musical instruments
are mentioned in the Bible, and five of them in the Pentateuch. Most
important among them are cymbals, flutes, silver trumpets, rams'
horns, the harp (_Kinnor_) and the ten-stringed lute (_Nevel_).[319]
The remark of Josephus that Solomon provided 40,000 harps and lutes
and 200,000 silver trumpets is marked by that disease of exaggeration
which seems to infect the mind of all later Jewish writers when they
look back with yearning to the vanished glories of their past. There
can, however, be no doubt that the orchestra was amply supplied, and
that there was a very numerous and well-trained choir.[320] We read
in the Psalms and elsewhere of tunes which they were trained to sing.
Such tunes were "The Well," and "The Bow," and "The Gazelle of the
morning," and "All my fresh springs shall be in Thee," and "Die for
the son" (_Muth-labben_).[321] In the second Temple female singers
were admitted;[322] in Herod's Temple Levite choir-boys took their
place.[323] The singing was often antiphonal. Some of the music
still used in the synagogue must date from these times, and there is
no reason to doubt that in the so-called Gregorian _tones_ we have
preserved to us a close approximation to the ancient hymnody of the
Temple. This element of ancient worship calls for no remark. It is a
religious instinct to use music in the service of God; and perhaps
the imagination of St. John in the Revelation, when he describes the
rapture of the heavenly host pouring forth the chant "Alleluia, for
the Lord God omnipotent reigneth," was coloured by reminiscences of
gorgeous functions in which he had taken part on the "Mountain of the
House."
2. When we proceed to speak of _the Priesthood_ we are met by
difficulties, to which we have already alluded, as to the date of the
varying regulations respecting it. "It would be difficult," says Dr.
Edersheim, "to conceive arrangements more thoroughly or consistently
opposed to what are commonly called 'priestly pretensions' than those
of the Old Testament."[324] According to the true ideal, Israel
was to be "a kingdom of priests and an holy nation";[325] but the
institution of _ministering_ priests was of course a necessity,
and the Jewish priesthood, which is now utterly abrogated, was,
or gradually became, representative. Representatively they had to
mediate between God and Israel, and typically to symbolise the
"holiness," _i.e._, the consecration of the Chosen People. Hence
they were required to be free from every bodily blemish. It was
regarded as a deadly offence for any one of them to officiate without
scrupulous safeguard against every ceremonial defilement, and they
were specially adorned and anointed for their office. They were an
extremely numerous body, and from the days of David are said to have
been divided into twenty-four courses. They were assisted by an army
of attendant Levites, also divided into twenty-four courses, who
acted as the cleansers and keepers of the Temple. But the distinction
of priests and Levites does not seem to be older than "the Priestly
Code," and criticism has all but demonstrated that the sections of
the Pentateuch known by that name belong, in their present form, not
to the age of Moses, but to the age of the successors of Ezekiel. The
elaborate priestly and Levitic arrangements ascribed to the days of
Aaron by the chronicler, who wrote six hundred years after David's
day, are unknown to the writers of the Book of Kings.
In daily life they wore no distinctive dress. In the Temple service,
all the year round, their vestments were of the simplest. They were
of white _byssus_ to typify innocence,[326] and four in number to
indicate completeness. They consisted of a turban, breeches, and
seamless coat of white linen, together with a girdle, symbolic of zeal
and activity, which was assumed during actual ministrations.[327] The
only magnificent vestments were those worn for a few hours by the
high priest once a year on the Great Day of Atonement. These "golden
vestments" were eight in number. To the ordinary robes were added the
robe of the ephod (_Meil_) of dark blue, with seventy-two golden
bells, and pomegranates of blue, purple, and scarlet; a jewelled
pectoral containing the Urim and Thummim; the mitre; and the golden
frontlet (_Ziz_), with its inscription of "Holiness to the Lord." The
ideal type was fulfilled, and the poor shadows abolished for ever, by
Him of whom it is said, "Such an high priest became us, who is holy,
harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners."
The priests were poor; they were very often entirely unlettered; they
seem to have had for many centuries but little influence on the moral
and spiritual life of the people. Hardly any good is recorded of them
as a body throughout the four hundred and ten years during which the
first Temple stood, as very little good had been recorded of them
in the earlier ages, and not much in the ages which were to follow.
We read of scarcely a single moral protest or spiritual awakenment
which had its origin in the priestly body. Their temptation was to
be absorbed in their elaborate ceremonials. As these differed but
little from the ritual functions of surrounding heathendom they seem
to have relapsed into apostasy with shameful readiness, and to have
submitted without opposition to the idolatrous aberrations of king
after king, even to the extent of admitting the most monstrous idols
and the most abhorrent pollutions into the sacred precincts of the
Temple, which it was their work to guard. When a prophet arose out of
their own supine and torpid ranks he invariably counted his brethren
amongst his deadliest antagonists. They ridiculed him as they ridiculed
Isaiah; they smote him on the cheek as they smote Jeremiah. The only
thing which roused them was the spirit of revolt against their vapid
ceremonialism, and their abject obedience to kings. The Presbyterate
could have no worse ideal, and could follow no more pernicious
example, than that of the Jewish priesthood. The days of their most
rigid ritualism were the days also of their most desperate moral
blindness. The crimes of their order culminated when they combined, as
one man, under their high priest Caiaphas and their sagan Annas[328]
to reject Christ for Barabbas, and to hand over to the Gentiles for
crucifixion the Messiah of their nation, the Lord of Life.
FOOTNOTES:
[315] "Sacrificia symbolicæ preces" (Outram, _De Sacrif._, p. 108).
[316] _Yoma_, f. 21, _a_.
[317] On vast ancient holocausts, see Athen., _Deipnos._, i. 5;
Diod. Sic., xi. 72; Porph., _De abstin._, ii. 60; Suet., _Calig._,
14; Sen., _De Benef._, iii. 27; Ammian. Marcel., xxii. 4, xxv. 4;
and other passages collected by the diligence of commentators. See,
too, Josephus (_B. J._, VI. ix. 3) who reckons that at a passover in
Nero's time 256,000 sacrifices were offered.
[318] Amos vi. 5; 1 Chron. xxiii. 5.
[319] Edersheim, _The Temple and its Services_, p. 54.
[320] The chronicler says that there were 38,000 Levites, of which
24,000 were "to oversee the work of the house of the Lord; and 6000
were officers and judges, and 4000 door-keepers; and 4000 praised the
Lord with the instruments which I made," _said David_, "to praise
therewith."
[321] Some of these titles of the Psalms are, however, very
uncertain. Gesenius thinks that this last title (Psalm ix.) means
that the Psalm "was to be sung by boys with virgins' voices." It
is, to say the least, a very curious coincidence, that in 1 Chron.
xxv. 4 the names of the sons of Heman, Giddalti and Romamti-ezer,
Joshbekashah, Mallothi, Hothir, Mahazioth, mean (omitting the strange
Joshbekashah, for which the LXX. Cod. Alex. reads Σεβακαιτάν),
consecutively, "I have given | great and high help: | I have spoken |
visions | in abundance." Had the names any reference to tunes?
[322] Ezra ii. 65; Neh. vii. 67; Psalm lxxxvii. 7.
[323] Of these, perhaps, were "the children" who shouted their
hosannas to Jesus in the Temple (Matt. xxi. 15).
[324] _The Temple and its Services_, p. 67.
[325] Exod. xix. 5, 6.
[326] Rev. xv. 6.
[327] Comp. Rev. i. 13, xv. 6.
[328] On this sagan, the later title for the "second priest," see 2
Kings xxv. 18; Jer. lii. 24.