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WHEN king Solomon had finished these works, these large and beautiful
buildings, and had laid up his donations in the temple, and all this in
the interval of seven years, and had given a demonstration of his riches
and alacrity therein, insomuch that any one who saw it would have thought
it must have been an immense time ere it could have been finished; and
would be surprised that so much should be finished in so short a time;
short, I mean, if compared with the greatness of the work: he also wrote
to the rulers and elders of the Hebrews, and ordered all the people to
gather themselves together to Jerusalem, both to see the temple which he
had built, and to remove the ark of God into it; and when this invitation
of the whole body of the people to come to Jerusalem was every where carried
abroad, it was the seventh month before they came together; which month
is by our countrymen called Thisri, but by the Macedonians Hyperberetoets.
The feast of tabernacles happened to fall at the same time, which was
celebrated by the Hebrews as a most holy and most eminent feast. So they
carried the ark and the tabernacle which Moses had pitched, and all the
vessels that were for ministration, to the sacrifices of God, and removed
them to the temple. 1
The king himself, and all the people and the Levites, went before, rendering
the ground moist with sacrifices, and drink-offerings, and the blood of
a great number of oblations, and burning an immense quantity of incense,
and this till the very air itself every where round about was so full of
these odors, that it met, in a most agreeable manner, persons at a great
distance, and was an indication of God's presence; and, as men's opinion
was, of his habitation with them in this newly built and consecrated place,
for they did not grow weary, either of singing hymns or of dancing, until
they came to the temple; and in this manner did they carry the ark. But
when they should transfer it into the most secret place, the rest of the
multitude went away, and only those priests that carried it set it between
the two cherubims, which embracing it with their wings, (for so were they
framed by the artificer,) they covered it, as under a tent, or a cupola.
Now the ark contained nothing else but those two tables of stone that preserved
the ten commandments, which God spake to Moses in Mount Sinai, and which
were engraved upon them; but they set the candlestick, and the table, and
the golden altar in the temple, before the most secret place, in the very
same places wherein they stood till that time in the tabernacle. So they
offered up the daily sacrifices; but for the brazen altar, Solomon set
it before the temple, over against the door, that when the door was opened,
it might be exposed to sight, and the sacred solemnities, and the richness
of the sacrifices, might be thence seen; and all the rest of the vessels
they gathered together, and put them within the temple.
1 This solemn removal of the ark from Mount Sion to Mount Moriah, at the distance of almost three quarters of a mile, confutes that notion of the modern Jews, and followed by many Christians also, as if those two were after a sort one and the same mountain, for which there is, I think, very little foundation.
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