Today we read about the mishkan in Parshah Terumah, and the accompanying reading is 1 Kings 5:26-6:13, Solomon building the temple. If your Scripture has 1 Kings 5 ending with verse 18, you are presumably using a Christian text, which is numbered all wrong. Start at 5:12 in the bizarre Christian text.
Digression: I know that it’s common in synagogues to have two different prayerbooks in regular use, generally an old edition and a new edition, so that the gabbai has to say “Please turn to page 178, or in the Nachman edition page 212, and please rise.” Or, more likely, the gabbai tells everyone to rise and turn to 178, and then some old guy in the back shouts out which page? and two people shout simultaneously 178 and 212, and then he says in the Nachman, which page?, and then two different people shout 212, and then a different old guy on the other side says the blue one? and the first guy says the Nachman and the guy shouts back with the blue cover? and he says the Nachman! and by this point the gabbai has joined a lamasery in Tibet. Does this happen in churches? End Digression.
And the LORD gave Solomon wisdom, as he promised him: and there was peace between Hiram and Solomon; and they two made a league together. And king Solomon raised a levy out of all Israel; and the levy was thirty thousand men. And he sent them to Lebanon, ten thousand a month by courses: a month they were in Lebanon, [and] two months at home: and Adoniram [was] over the levy. And Solomon had threescore and ten thousand that bare burdens, and fourscore thousand hewers in the mountains; Beside the chief of Solomon’s officers which [were] over the work, three thousand and three hundred, which ruled over the people that wrought in the work. And the king commanded, and they brought great stones, costly stones, [and] hewed stones, to lay the foundation of the house. And Solomon’s builders and Hiram’s builders did hew [them], and the stonesquarers: so they prepared timber and stones to build the house.
And it came to pass in the four hundred and eightieth year after the children of Israel were come out of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon’s reign over Israel, in the month Zif, which [is] the second month, that he began to build the house of the LORD. And the house which king Solomon built for the LORD, the length thereof [was] threescore cubits, and the breadth thereof twenty [cubits], and the height thereof thirty cubits. And the porch before the temple of the house, twenty cubits [was] the length thereof, according to the breadth of the house; [and] ten cubits [was] the breadth thereof before the house. And for the house he made windows of narrow lights. And against the wall of the house he built chambers round about, [against] the walls of the house round about, [both] of the temple and of the oracle: and he made chambers round about: The nethermost chamber [was] five cubits broad, and the middle [was] six cubits broad, and the third [was] seven cubits broad: for without [in the wall] of the house he made narrowed rests round about, that [the beams] should not be fastened in the walls of the house. And the house, when it was in building, was built of stone made ready before it was brought thither: so that there was neither hammer nor axe [nor] any tool of iron heard in the house, while it was in building. The door for the middle chamber [was] in the right side of the house: and they went up with winding stairs into the middle [chamber], and out of the middle into the third. So he built the house, and finished it; and covered the house with beams and boards of cedar. And [then] he built chambers against all the house, five cubits high: and they rested on the house [with] timber of cedar. And the word of the LORD came to Solomon, saying, [Concerning] this house which thou art in building, if thou wilt walk in my statutes, and execute my judgments, and keep all my commandments to walk in them; then will I perform my word with thee, which I spake unto David thy father: And I will dwell among the children of Israel, and will not forsake my people Israel.
A thing that strikes me about this passage is the use of the word house for what was to become the Temple. The word is bayit, and of course it means house as we would use it, or home, or a household (as Abraham’s house) together with its inhabitants, or sometimes metaphorically. It’s used over two thousand times in the Scripture. In this week’s reading, in fact, it’s used more or less as housing, a place for a staff to fit in within the construction of the mishkan. I like the extension of that use to the Temple; a socket, if you will, to brace the strength of the Divine. Much better than thinking about it as a sort of Divine crash pad, a place where the Lord goes to bed down for the night.
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.