Tabernacle.
It is characteristic of the Epistle that all the arguments from the divine worship of Judaism which it contains are drawn from the institutions of the Tabernacle. These, which are treated as the direct embodiment of the heavenly archetype, are supposed to be still preserved in the later forms and to give force to them. They were never superseded even when they were practically modified. The Temple indeed no less than the Kingdom, with which it corresponded, was the sign of a spiritual declension. Both were endeavours to give a fixed and permanent shape, according to the conditions of earthly life, to ideas which in their essential nature led the thoughts of men forward to the future and the unseen. God was pleased to use, in this as in other cases, the changes which were brought about by the exigences of national life for the fulfilment of His own counsel, but the divine interpreter of the Old Testament necessarily looked, beyond the splendours of the sacred buildings (Matt. 24:1 ff.), and the triumphs of the monarchy of David, to the sacred tent of the pilgrim people and the heavenly sovereignty.
The usage of the Epistle in this respect (Heb. 8:2, 5: 9:11) is felt to be more significant when we take account of the usage of the other Books of the New Testament. The only other references to the Tabernacle (earthly or heavenly) are in Acts 7:44 (
hJ skhnh; tou' marturivou
), and in the Apocalypse (Rev. 13:6
blasfhmh'sai to; o[noma aujtou' kai; th;n skhnh;n aujtou', tou;" ejn tw'/ oujranw'/ skhnou'nta"
, 15:5
oJ nao;" th'" skhnh'" tou' marturivou
, 21:3
hJ skhnh; tou' qeou' meta; tw'n ajnqrwvpwn
). In the passage of the Acts St Stephen appears to draw a contrast between the tent and the house (Acts 7:47 ff.); and the language of the Apocalypse illustrates in several points the wider views of the Tabernacle which are opened in the Epistle. The term
to; iJerovn
(the Temple with its courts and subordinate buildings) is found outside the Gospels and Acts only in 1 Cor. 9:13, where the reference to the Jewish Temple is fixed by
qusiasthvrion
(Heb. 10:18).
Naov"
(the Sanctuary) is used in a spiritual sense in John 2:21; 1 Cor. 3:16 f.; 6:19; 2 Cor. 6:16; Eph. 2:21 (comp. Apoc. 21:22), and again literally in 2 Thess. 2:4. The word
oi\ko"
is used of the material building in the Gospels and Acts, and of the human antitype in 1 Pet. 4:17; 1 Tim. 3:15, as in Heb. 3:2 ff.; 10:21 (from Num. 12:7
LXX.). Thus the actual reference to the Mosaic Tabernacle as a lesson in the divine revelation is peculiar to the Epistle. What then was its general teaching?
The names of the Tabernacle offer an instructive answer to the question.
( a ) The commonest single name is that which expresses generally a
habitation, $ K;v]mi , H5438. The root $ k'v; , H8905 is used of settling, resting,
dwelling, and that both of man and beasts (so of the glory of Godthe
Shekinah in later languageEx. 24:16 & c.). The word $ K;v]mi , H5438
suggests then nothing more than dwelling-place (of men, Num. 16:24, 27; Ps. 87:2, c of the Temple in the pl., Ps. 43:3; 46:5, & c.), and, as it is
expressed definitely, the dwelling-place of Jehovah ( y $ K'vmi " y ): Lev. 17:4;
Num. 16:9; 17:13 (28); 19:13; 31:30, 47 [Josh. 22:19; 1 Chron. 21:29] (LXX. hJ skhnh; Kurivou , Vulg. tabernaculum Domini ). Comp. Ex. 29:45 f. It is generally rendered in the LXX. by skhnhv (106 times [Trommius]) and less frequently by