Tuesday, 26 February 2013

The Holy of Holies


For the main purpose of this huge construction, a special room known as the Holy of Holies was situated inside of the Holy Temple in order to provide a suitable place for housing the Ark of Covenant. On the contrary to the magnificent outlook of the Temple, it is said that it’s ‘most important room contained almost no furniture at all’ (http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/The_Temple.html). The distinctive uniqueness of this room could be imaginable from the following descriptions too: 
‘In Solomon’s Temple the Holy of Holies formed a part of the house of Yhwh (I Kings vi. 1 et seq.), which was 60 cubits in length, 20 cubits in breadth, 30 cubits in height, and built of stone (Josephus, “Ant.” viii. 3, § 2: “white marble”), and was divided into two sections by a partition of cedar-wood with a door covered by a costly curtain (Josephus, l.c.§ 3; II Chron. iii. 14). The section farthest from the entrance, designated also as the “debir” (the “oracle” “the most holy place,” I Kings vi. 5, R. V. margin), was 20 cubits high and presented the shape of a cube. The stone of this inner or hinder part, like the outer room, was completely hidden with cedar boards carved with knops or gourds and open flowers and then covered with pure gold. This room must have been without light. In it was placed the Ark (ib. vi. 18, 19)’ (http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/7830-holy-of-holies).
Accordingly, the following custom followed to be established presumably due to the notion of the Holy of Holies: ‘That part of the Tabernacle and of the Temple which was regarded as possessing the utmost degree of holiness (or inaccessibility), and into which none but the High Priest—and he only once during the year, on the Day of Atonement—was permitted to enter’ (ibid).

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