History
- The Temple
The crowning achievement of
King Solomon's reign was the erection of a magnificent Temple (Beit ha-Midkash)
in Jerusalem. His father, King David, had wanted to build a great Temple
for God a generation earlier, as a permanent resting place for the Ark
containing the Ten Commandments. A divine edict, however, had forbidden
him from doing so. "You will not build a house for My name," God said to
him, "for you are a man of battles and have shed blood" (I Chronicles
28:3).
The Bible's description of Solomon's Temple suggests that the inside
ceiling was was 180 feet long, 90 feet wide, and 50 feet high. The
highest point on the Temple that King Solomon built was actually 120
cubits tall (about 20 stories or about 207 feet). According to the
Tanach (II Chronicles):
3:3 The length by cubits after the ancient measure was threescore
cubits, and the breadth twenty cubits.
3:4 And the porch that was before the house, the length of it, according
to the breadth of the house, was twenty cubits, and the height a hundred
and twenty; and he overlaid it within with pure gold.
He spares no expense in the building's creation. He orders vast
quantities of cedar from King Hiram of Tyre (I Kings 5:2025), has huge
blocks of the choicest stone quarried, and commands that the building's
foundation be laid with hewn stone. To complete the massive project, he
imposes forced labor on all his subjects, drafting people for work
shifts lasting a month at a time. Some 3,300 officials are appointed to
oversee the Temple's erection (5:2730). Solomon assumes such heavy
debts in building the Temple that he is forced to pay off King Hiram
with twenty towns in the Galilee (I Kings 9:11).
When the Temple is completed, Solomon inaugurates it with prayer and
sacrifice, and even invites nonJews to come and pray there. He urges
God to pay particular heed to their prayers: "Thus all the peoples of
the earth will know Your name and revere You, as does Your people
Israel; and they will recognize that Your name is attached to this House
that I have built" (I Kings 8:43).
Until the Temple was destroyed by the Babylonians some four hundred
years later, in 586 B.C.E., sacrifice was the predominant mode of divine
service there. Seventy years later, a second Temple was built on the
same site, and sacrifices again resumed. During the first century B.C.E.,
Herod greatly enlarged and expanded this Temple. The Second Temple was
destroyed by the Romans in 70 C.E., after the failure of the Great
Revolt.
As glorious and elaborate as the Temple was, its most important room
contained almost no furniture at all. Known as the Holy of Holies (Kodesh
Kodashim), it housed the two tablets of the Ten Commandments.
Unfortunately, the tablets disappeared when the Babylonians destroyed
the Temple, and during the Second Temple era, the Holy of Holies was a
small, entirely bare room. Only once a year, on Yom Kippur, the High
Priest would enter this room and pray to God on Israel's behalf. A
remarkable monologue by a Hasidic rabbi in the Yiddish play The Dybbuk
conveys a sense of what the Jewish throngs worshiping at the Temple must
have experienced during this ceremony:
God's world is great and holy. The holiest land in the world is the land
of Israel. In the land of Israel the holiest city is Jerusalem. In
Jerusalem the holiest place was the Temple, and in the Temple the
holiest spot was the Holy of Holies.... There are seventy peoples in the
world. The holiest among these is the people of Israel. The holiest of
the people of Israel is the tribe of Levi. In the tribe of Levi the
holiest are the priests. Among the priests, the holiest was the High
Priest.... There are 354 days in the [lunar] year. Among these, the
holidays are holy. Higher than these is the holiness of the Sabbath.
Among Sabbaths, the holiest is the Day of Atonement, the Sabbath of
Sabbaths.... There are seventy languages in the world. The holiest is
Hebrew. Holier than all else in this language is the holy Torah, and in
the Torah the holiest part is the Ten Commandments. In the Ten
Commandments the holiest of all words is the name of God.... And once
during the year, at a certain hour, these four supreme sanctities of the
world were joined with one another. That was on the Day of Atonement,
when the High Priest would enter the Holy of Holies and there utter the
name of God. And because this hour was beyond measure holy and awesome,
it was the time of utmost peril not only for the High Priest but for the
whole of Israel. For if in this hour there had, God forbid, entered the
mind of the High Priest a false or sinful thought, the entire world
would have been destroyed.
To this day, traditional Jews pray three times a day for the Temple's
restoration. During the centuries the Muslims controlled Palestine, two
mosques were built on the site of the Jewish Temple. (This was no
coincidence; it is a common Islamic custom to build mosques on the sites
of other people's holy places.) Since any attempt to level these mosques
would lead to an international Muslim holy war (jihad) against Israel,
the Temple cannot be rebuilt in the foreseeable future.
From:
www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org
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