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God’s Clouds – (6.) Solomon and the Glory Clouds in the Temple

God’s Clouds – (6.) Solomon and the Glory Clouds in the Temple

God’s Clouds – (6.) Solomon and the Glory Clouds in the Temple.

“God thunders marvelously with His voice; He works wonders that we cannot understand.

He commands the snow, ‘Fall to the ground!’ And the downpour of rain, His mighty downpour of rain…

He loads the clouds with moisture and scatters His lightning-clouds…

Listen to this, O Job, and pay attention! Stand still and ponder the wondrous works of God;

Do you have any idea how God controls the storms, and causes the lightning to flash from His clouds?

Do you understand how the clouds are balanced in the sky, floating in the air, which are miraculous works of Him who is perfect in wisdom and skill?  (Job 37:5-6, 11, 14-16).

Clouds truly are wondrous, and miraculous, and one of our Creator’s greatest inventions. Each cloud we see in the sky is unrepeatable, completely unique and always changing. They can be dark and foreboding, or light and joyous. They can pour down upon us light rain or heavy rain, a blizzard of snow or postcard snowflakes, driving hail or frozen ice. They can strike the earth with dramatic lightning or be a sun-drenched fluffball. Clouds can be practically luminous and filled with sunlight or monstrously dark without any light at all.  It’s no wonder clouds have captured the imagination of poets, artists, pretty much all of mankind since the beginning, for they are just hanging there in the sky between heaven and earth, somehow floating and perfectly balanced in midair, above the earth yet still near us as well. Hopefully the science of clouds we now know will not remove the unpredictable mystery and glorious wonder of clouds. As author John Ruskin put it, “You may take any single fragment of any cloud in the sky, and you will find it put together as if there had been a year’s thought over the plan of it – a picture in itself. You may try every other piece of cloud in the heavens, and you will find them everyone as perfect, and yet not one in the least like another.” (The True and the Beautiful, 1858).

GLORY: the biblical meaning of God’s glory tends to emphasize the weighty splendor of God’s personal presence; God’s supreme worthiness to be honored and praised; the overwhelming greatness of God’s beauty and power; the eternal weight of God’s substance; the heaviness of God’s inherent majesty.  The weight of God’s presence outweighs the world; His presence is more substantive and heavier than the universe. God’s profound glory is independent of His Shekinah glory on earth. His eternal glory remains constant, whether or not He decides to reveal Himself to us. God’s essential glory is forever Real in the heavens, whether or not we experience Him here with our senses on earth.

God’s Word is basically the story of God’s glory. Holy Scripture is the glorious story of God’s Presence on earth, His Shekinah glory dwelling with humanity through the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. In fact, rabbinic authorities have long taught that the Shekinah is present whenever two or three believers are gathered to study Torah. And the Christian have expanded that to say that “wherever two or three are gathered in God’s Name, He is in their midst.” Many biblical scholars have said, then, that the Shekinah glory is the nearest Jewish equivalent to the Holy Spirit of God.

The Glory Cloud as a Theophany. Theophany is from the Greek words “Theo” (God) and “phaino” (to appear). So a theophany is when God makes a temporary appearance on earth for reasons of His own. A theophany is God’s temporary visible manifestation to remind us of His permanent presence in the world.  A theophany is when God stoops to us in gracious self-revelation in a form that we can experience through our senses. Theophanies, though, are preliminary, because they anticipate the ultimate theophany in the incarnation of the Son of God, Jesus Christ. Theophanies in the Hebrew Bible were God’s temporary appearances, but in Jesus we see the fulfillment of theophany, a permanent appearance of God on earth.

The Glory Cloud as Shekinah: The word “shekinah” is not found in the Hebrew Bible, but was used by the Jewish authorities between the Testaments and in the Aramaic paraphrase of the Hebrew Bible to be equivalent to the Hebrew word “Kavod,” which means “glory.”

Shekinah is a word that combines “shakan” (Dwells) and “mishkan” (tabernacle), and so literally means “the One who dwells, settles in, resides, makes Himself at home.”

Shekinah is defined as the Divine Presence, the glory of God that dwells on earth, and implies God’s nearness, closeness, God’s with-ness to us.

Shekinah was often used as a word that represents God’s holy name Yahweh, which was not to be pronounced.

Shekinah is understood in Judaism, and then adopted by Christianity, to be the “uncreated light, fire and luminous cloud” that became visible when God made an appearance on the earth. God’s Shekinah glory announced His presence.

Shekinah glory is not the full inner essence of God’s Being, since God is an invisible Spirit who “dwells in unapproachable light” (1 Tim. 6:16).  But instead, God’s Shekinah is the “out-raying” of that source of Light, like the sunbeams coming directly from the sun. We can’t even look directly at the sun, but we can see and feel and get the benefits of the sun though its rays. The Shekinah is the sunbeam from the “Father of Lights.” Isn’t it wonderful that the palmist exclaims that “Yahweh God is the sun!” (Ps. 84:11).

Shekinah has been described as when the Omnipresent One becomes localized, when the Invisible One becomes visible.

Shekinah is God’s visible glory pulsating outwards from the spiritual energy of God’s Being, the flowing out of light from the “consuming fire” of God’s essence . (Ex. 24;17).

Shekinah is also equivalent to the Biblical terms “My Glory,”  “The Cloud,” “The Pillar of Cloud,” “My Presence,” and “the Cloud of Yahweh” in the eyes of rabbinic authorities.

Sacred Festivity and Worship. When King Solomon completed the construction of the Temple that his father David had designed, he immediately wanted to bring the Ark of the Covenant into the finished Temple’s Holy of Holies. They did so with much fanfare and worship and ritual sacrifices.  Solomon’s dedication of the temple was extraordinary, as was his blessing over the people of Israel. The Temple was filled with God’s glory cloud not just once, but twice as the people, led by the singers and musicians and priests who sang out the refrain that has stood the test of time in the Judeo-Christian faith… “The Lord is good, and His mercy endures forever!“

“King Solomon and all the congregation of Israel who had assembled before him, were before the Ark, sacrificing so many sheep and oxen that they could not be counted or numbered. Then the priests brought the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord to its place, in the inner sanctuary of the Temple, in the Holy of Holies, underneath the wings of the cherubim… And when the priests came out of the Holy Place, and all the Levitical singers arrayed in fine linen, with cymbals, harps, and lures, stood east of the altar with 120 priests who were trumpeters, and it was the duty of the trumpeters and singers to make themselves heard in unison in praise and thanksgiving to the Lord, and when the song was raised, with trumpet and cymbal and other musical instruments, in praise to the LORD Yahweh, ‘For He is good, and His mercy is forever,’ the Temple, the House of the Lord, was filled with cloud, so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud, for the glory of the Lord filled the House of God.” (2 Chronicles 5).

“Then Solomon said, ‘The Lord has said that he would dwell in a thick, dark cloud. But I have built You an exalted House, a place for You to dwell in forever!’ Then the king turned around and blessed all the assembly of Israel, while all the assembly stood…” (2 Chronicles 6:1-3).

“As soon as Solomon finished the prayer, fire came down from heaven and consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifices, and the glory of the Lord filled the Temple. And the priests could not enter the House of the Lord, because the glory of Yahweh filled the Lord’s House. When all the people of Israel saw the fire come down and the glory of the Lord on the Temple, they bowed down with their faces to the ground on the pavement and worshiped and gave thanks to the Lord, saying, ‘For He is good, for his mercy is forever!” (2 Chronicles 7:1-3).

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