John H. Paterson
Then David gave to Solomon his son ... the pattern of all that he had by the spirit ...
All this, said David, the Lord made me understand in writing by his hand upon me,
even all the works of this pattern. 1 Chronicles 28:11, 12, 19.
THE tragedy of Solomon's temple is simply stated. Imagine a king setting out to erect for God the world's most beautiful building. Imagine him employing thousands of labourers in the construction. Imagine him, too, drawing upon all the resources of the known world for decorating and furnishing it, and then surrounding this building with other palaces and houses so [33/34] splendid that kings and queens came from far and near to see it all. As foreigners, they could never see the inside of the temple, but the splendour was such that they were astonished even by "the ascent by which he went up into the house of the Lord" (1 Kings 10:5), let alone by the buildings themselves.
Now, if you have imagined all that, you have a building more ornate than the Taj Mahal, better constructed than St. Paul's Cathedral, and containing more gold than the most richly-endowed medieval shrine! So, given all that expense and care, how long would you hope that such a building would last? Built to the glory of God and protected by the greatest king of his time, you and I would foresee for it, would we not, a long and glorious history?
Actually, it lasted for just 34 years! It was finished in the eleventh year of Solomon's reign. He had 29 more years to live and, in the fifth year of his successor, Rehoboam, the king of Egypt arrived at Jerusalem (1 Kings 14:25-6) and stripped the temple of as much of its gold and decorations as he could carry away. All that trouble and expenses for a mere 34 years of glory!
The tragedy, then, is clear. But it simply serves to raise a question mark or, if you like, to introduce the mystery of the temple, which is this: should it ever have been built in the first place? In attempting to answer that question, the bible student must take account of some curiously conflicting evidence. Here it is:
1. David had the idea of building God a house more permanent than the tent or tabernacle in which He had so far lived among His people (2 Samuel 7:1-2).
2. God responded to David's idea by asking what put such thoughts into his head, and saying that He had never mentioned any desire for such a house (vv.4-10). He added that, if it came to house-building, God would build David a house.
3. God then told David that a son of his might build the house that David had thought of (vv.12-13).
4. Much later on, David told Solomon that every detail of the house was dictated to him, in writing, by God Himself (1 Chronicles 28:19).
5. When the finished temple was dedicated, God filled this "unwanted" house with His glory.
At that point, I think that we are all entitled to feel a little confused! If God really wanted a house built for Himself, why did He respond in the way He did to David's idea? If He did not really want a house at all, why did He design it in every detail? Why, when it was finally built, did it so nearly reproduce the structure and shape of the tabernacle in the wilderness, which was the product not only of God's pattern, but also of God's initiative -- a house that He had asked for?
I fear that I am not in a position to answer any of these questions satisfactorily. Indeed, my only comfort in my ignorance is that, to judge by such literature as I know of, hardly anyone else has answers for them ether! We have books in plenty about the tabernacle, but almost nothing about Solomon's temple.
Not, of course, that there is any lack of broad hints that the temple's structure was significant, as also were the contrasts with the tabernacle. The single laver in the earlier structure was replaced by ten lavers and a "sea". The sanctuary in the temple was surrounded by a large number of lesser rooms; yet the record makes it particularly clear that the rooms were built in such a way that no part of these structures outside intruded into the sanctuary. All this is evidently rich in spiritual meaning, but the Epistle to the Hebrews, which throws so much light on the significance of the tabernacle, is silent about the temple. The mystery remains: should the temple have been there in the first place, or should it not?
Curiously enough, the same kind of mystery seems to surround Israel's other great institution of the same period: the kingship. You will remember [34/35] how unsatisfactory were its beginnings -- that Israel demanded a king for no better reason than that everybody else had one, and that God said to Samuel, "they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me, that I should not reign over them" (1 Samuel 8:7). Thereupon He chose for them Saul, who was a disaster and, after him, David, "a man after my own heart", who has ever since been the epitome of kingship for Jew and Christian alike. If the whole idea of kingship was wrong, why David?
But let us return, for the present, to the temple. It is clear that, when the idea of building a house for God first occurred to David, his motive was to give it permanence. He had a house of cedar (2 Samuel 7:2), and it seemed to him quite wrong that God should have a mere tent. He was also determined that this house should be worthy of its Occupant: it "must be exceeding magnifical, of fame and glory throughout all countries" (1 Chronicles 22:5). And the house eventually built at Jerusalem fulfilled both these conditions. In fact, permanence takes on new dimensions when we realise that, even after repeated destructions, some of the stones of this house survive to the present day.
This same thought of permanence seems to have underlain, also, God's insistence that the temple should be built by Solomon and not by David. The reason He gave was that David had been a man of war, but that his son would be a man of peace. By the time Solomon came to the throne, the days of fighting and conquest were over; the kingdom had reached its greatest territorial extension. From this point of view, therefore, it should never be necessary for the house to leave its permanent site. Never again should there be anything to threaten its peace. Never again should the people of God have to move on. They were subjects of a kingdom existing in triumph and in peace, and their wandering days were over. Only under these conditions, apparently, would God consider lending His name and His presence to the house in Jerusalem.
So now let us ask ourselves: what were the advantages which the temple possessed over the tabernacle, and then what were the disadvantages ? Was this a good idea, or was it not?
The advantages, it seems to me, were twofold. One was that, in the temple, it was possible to construct a setting of much greater splendour than in the tabernacle. The tent in the wilderness was, after all, a relatively simple affair, suited to the life of a nomadic people and made, largely, out of materials which they had to hand on their travels. For the temple, David and Solomon scoured the world for treasures: it was built to the same ground plan as the tabernacle, but everything was grander, more impressive, more evocative of the greatness of the God who dwelt there.
