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| The Account of the Building of Solomon's Temple Contains Serious Difficulties and is to Be Interpreted Spiritually.
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24. The Account of
the Building of Solomon’s Temple Contains Serious Difficulties
and is to Be Interpreted Spiritually.
For the sake of those, however, who consider that
nothing further than the narrative itself is meant to be indicated in
these words, it may not be unfitting to introduce at this point some
considerations which they can scarcely withstand, to show that the
words ought to be regarded as those of the Spirit, and that the mind of
the Spirit should be sought for in them. Did the sons of the
kings really spend their time in hewing the great and precious stones,
and practise a craft so little in keeping with royal birth? And
the number of the burden-bearers and of the stone-cutters and of the
officers, the duration, too, of the period of preparing the stones and
marking them, is all this recorded as it really was? The holy house, too,
was got ready in peace and was to be built for God without hammer or
axe or any iron tool, that there might be no disturbance in the house
of God. And again I would ask those who are in bondage to the
letter how it is possible that there should be eighty thousand
stone-cutters and that the house of God should be built out of hard
white stones without the noise of hammer or axe or any iron tool being
heard in His house while the building was going on? Is it not
living stones that are hewn without any noise or tumult somewhere
outside the temple, so that they are brought ready prepared to the
place which awaits them in the building? And there is some sort
of an ascent about the temple of God, not with angles, but with bends
of straight lines. For it is written,5124
“And there was a winding staircase to the middle, and from the
middle to the third floor;” for the staircase in the house of God
had to be spiral, thus imitating in its ascent the circle, which is the
most perfect figure. But that this house might be secure five
ties are built in it,5125
as fair as
possible, a cubit high, that on looking up one might see it to be
suggested how we rise from sensible things to the so-called divine
perceptions, and so be brought to perceive those things which are seen
only by the mind. But the place of the happier stones appears to
be that called Dabir,5126
where the ark of
the covenant of the Lord was, and, as I may say, the handwriting of
God, the tables written with His own finger. And the whole house
is overlaid with gold; “the whole house,” we read,5127
“he overlaid with gold until all the
house was finished.” But there were two cherubim in Dabir,
a word which the translators of the Hebrew Bible into Greek failed to
render satisfactorily. Some, failing to do justice to the
language, render it the temple; but it is more sacred than the
temple. Now everything about the house was made golden, for a
sign that the mind which is quite made perfect estimates accurately the
things perceived by the intellect. But it is not given to all to
approach and know them; and hence the veil of the court is erected,
since to most of the priests and levites the things in the inmost part
of the temple are not revealed.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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