Temple Themes

The entire Book of Job is a divine council, which could have taken place in a premortal setting, or it could have been an intervention during Job’s mortality. Either way, the events are real and Job is a real person. Many in the world today consider the Book of Job to be a fictitious parable,

Mordecai is honored years after revealing an assassination plot against the king. He is given the king’s ring (Esther 8:2). “Then the king held out the golden sceptre toward Esther (the queen). So Esther arose, and stood before the king” (8:4). The typology here has three purposes. Standing before the king is akin to coming

A pattern of worship emerges in Nehemiah chapter 8 with the first public reading of the Book of the Law setting a pattern for King Benjamin’s gathering in Mosiah chapters 2 through 5. This reading began on “the first day of the seventh month,” (Nehemiah 8:2) which would be Rosh Hashanah, or Feast of Trumpets.

Solomon’s Temple had a molten sea which rested upon twelve oxen, as described in 2 Chronicles 4:4-5: “It stood upon twelve oxen, three looking toward the north, and three looking toward the west, and three looking toward the south, and three looking toward the east: and the sea was set above upon them, and all

There will be more overlap in this post as we enter the Books of Chronicles. Kings and Chronicles cover the same historical period. Originally, First and Second Kings were one book, but with the Septuagint (Greek translation of the Old Testament) they were split into two books. The Vulgate translation had four books of the

This post (like several others) will be somewhat repetitive, but it’s in these Come Follow Me chapters in the reign of King Josiah that many religious reforms occur. Both kingdoms of Israel and Judah had gone “whoring after other gods.” King Ahab in the Northern Kingdom largely introduced Baal worship. Manasseh and Ahaz led the

In 2 Kings 21:13, we encounter our first measuring tools: “And I will stretch over Jerusalem the line of Samaria, and the plummet of the house of Ahab: and I will wipe Jerusalem as a man wipeth a dish, wiping it, and turning it upside down.”   The Lord uses three symbolic measuring tools—the line,

In the temple, the veil can be very thin sometimes inviting communication with heaven. If we could only see what’s happening on the other side of the veil. Elisha and his servant have such an experience.   Elisha is helping the king of Israel in a war with Syria. Elisha is telling the king of

We have examined the procedures for the rite of cleansing lepers in Leviticus 14 and the associated atonement symbolism. Two birds were used—one for a sacrifice and the other bird to be set free. The sacrificial bird was killed in an “earthen vessel over running water.” The body of Jesus was placed in an earthen

Oil was essential in ancient times and one of the first fruit products of the Holy Land. Kings (and queens) were anointed with oil. For example, in 1 Kings 1:39, Zadok the priest took a horn of oil out of the tabernacle and anointed Solomon. Washing and anointing occurred together in ancient times as a