Perrydox.com is devoted to the pursuit of truth, whether plain or paradoxical, whether simple or sublime, or simply absurd yet absolute.
Hebrews 9 – Emphasis on Tabernacle
Within Hebrews there is a greater emphasis on the Tabernacle than the Temple, although the same people worshipping the same God in the same way used both. In fact, the temple is never even mentioned. Why the emphasis on the Tabernacle? While the treatise does not tell us, maybe we can surmise some possible reasons why.
1. The tabernacle was directly ordered by God from the beginning of their exodus. The tabernacle goes back to Mt.Sinai. The temple was originally David’s idea.
2. Since the tabernacle was associated with Mt. Sinai, it was more closely tied to the covenant given there by God and agreed to by the people.
3. In chapter 2, the Holy Spirit gives as an example of Israel’s disobedience their sin in the wilderness. This would be a time-period associated with the tabernacle and not the temple.
4. Being that the tabernacle came prior to the temple, and each was an anti-type of heaven (Heb.9), the tabernacle was more closely associated with Heaven since it came first.
5. The tabernacle was never defiled by idol worship and the destruction by the Gentiles.
6. Since the tabernacle was mobile, it better represented the spiritual aspect of worshiping in spirit and in truth (Jn.4:24).
7. The Hebrew word for “tabernacle” Mishkan is related to the Hebrew word to “dwell”, “rest”, or “to live in”, referring to the “[In-dwelling] Presence of God”, the Shekhina (or Shechina) (based on the same Hebrew root word as Mishkan), that dwelled or rested within this divinely ordained mysterious structure. The Hebrew word for a “neighbor” is shakhen from the same root as mishkan. (#7 – Wikipedia)
Comments