| The Temple of Creation: Part One
July 15, 2020
By Trevor Laurence
Throughout the Old Testament, the biblical authors describe God’s creation with a variety of architectural metaphors. God’s upper chamber is in the heavens (Amos 9:6), like a top-story room whose floor is the sky. The visible heavens are stretched out like a tent (Isa 40:22; Job 9:8). The earth rests on foundations (Pss 18:15; 82:5; 102:25; Prov 8:29). The world is supported by pillars (1 Sam 2:8; Ps 75:3; Job 9:6).
Psalm 104 brings together several such images to depict the Lord’s fashioning of the world as the construction project of a careful craftsman:
Bless the LORD, O my soul!
O LORD my God, you are very great!
You are clothed with splendor and majesty,
covering yourself with light as with a garment,
stretching out the heavens like a tent.
He lays the beams of his chambers on the waters;
he makes the clouds his chariot;
he rides on the wings of the wind;
he makes his messengers winds,
his ministers a flaming fire.
He set the earth on its foundations,
so that it should never be moved. (Ps 104:1–5)
It is tempting for modern readers to glibly attribute such architectural descriptions to pre-scientific conceptions of the cosmos, a relic of the misguided ancient imagination. Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Hubble had not yet arrived to set things straight, after all. But that misses the point entirely. Psalm 104 and other passages describe the act of creation as the building of a home, and God’s home is a temple.
The tabernacle in which God dwelt with Israel was enclosed with a tent covering stretched out across its top, and God stretches the heavens as a covering...
When the Bible describes creation like a house, that is because creation is a house, a house for the Lord, a temple for God to abide with his people. Our balking at the biblical authors’ architectural world imagery is due to our misguided imaginations, not theirs...
The foundation for the development of these architectural depictions of the cosmos as God’s temple is laid in the first chapters of Scripture. Genesis 1–3 never explicitly states, “The world is a temple,” but with an array of evocative associations between creation and God’s subsequent dwellings in the tabernacle and temple, these chapters proclaim that truth in a manner more vivid and immersive than any straightforward declaration ever could...
And there was evening and there was morning, the first day (Gen 1:5). God’s instructions for the construction of the tabernacle are organized in seven speeches. Seven times in Exod 25–31, the refrain is repeated, “The Lord said to Moses.” This seven-fold structure occurs in Gen 1 as well, as the building of God’s creational temple occurs over the space of seven days. Interestingly, certain parallels exist between the seven speeches and the seven days. On the first day, God creates light—which Ps 104:2 likens to a garment of splendor and majesty in which God robes himself—and the rhythm of evening and morning first occurs, and in the first speech, the Lord gives instructions for tending the light of the lamp “from evening to morning” (Exod 27:21) and for Aaron’s holy garments, in which he is to be robed “for glory and for beauty” (Exod 28:2). The third day brings the gathering of the seas, and the third speech details the bronze water basin. The sixth speech commissions Bezalel and Oholiab to lead the construction and ornamentation of the tabernacle, and on the sixth day, God commissions humanity to participate in subduing the earth, bringing out the world’s potential and making it a dwelling fit for a King. The seventh and final speech commands Israel to observe the Sabbath, explicitly pointing back to the seventh day of creation when God “rested and was refreshed” (Exod 31:17)...
“Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters” (Gen 1:6). On the second day, God fashions the firmament to separate (בדל) the waters above from the waters below. The blue expanse of the heavens divides God’s heavenly abode from the world beneath as the floor of God’s throne room (cf. Ps 104:3), and indeed when Moses leads the seventy elders of Israel up Sinai, they see under God’s feet “as it were a pavement of sapphire stone, like the very heaven for clearness” (Exod 24:10). Outside of Gen 1—which is intently focused upon the act of separating—the next time this specific term for “separate” occurs is in Exod 26:33, where a veil of blue and purple and scarlet that mimics the colors of the sky “shall separate (בדל) for you the Holy Place from the Most Holy,” dividing the place priests regularly inhabit from the sanctuary that holds the ark of the covenant which is the footstool of God’s throne (cf. Ps 132:7–8; 1 Chron 28:2). We ought not be surprised, then, when the heavens “being torn open” (σκίζω, Mark 1:10) at Jesus’ baptism serves to preview the tearing (σκίζω, Mark 15:38) of the temple curtain at Jesus’ crucifixion.
“Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens…And let them be for signs and for seasons” (Gen 1:14). On the fourth day, God places lights (מָאוֺר) in the firmament in order to mark the seasons (מוֺעֲדִים). Elsewhere in the Pentateuch, the terms used in Gen 1:14 have a decidedly cultic connotation. In the Holy Place outside the veil, Aaron and his sons would tend “the light” (מָאוֺר, Exod 27:20; cf. 25:6; 35:14)—the luminary lamp that shone perpetually, and Lev 23 outlines the מוֺעֲדִים of the Lord, the appointed times and festal gatherings that Israel was to observe throughout the year. The lights in the firmament shine like the light in the tabernacle, and they proclaim the appointed times when God’s people are to gather in his presence...
“Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion…” (Gen 1:26). The house of the Lord is not the only structure in the larger temple complex in Jerusalem. Connected to the Lord’s house, Solomon builds his palace (1 Kgs 7:1–12), and the house of the king resembles the house of the Lord in its three-part structure, building materials, and various specific features. The Davidic king of Israel, the son of God (Ps 2:7; 2 Sam 7:14) who represents God’s kingship to his people and the world, lives alongside the divine king... At creation and in Jerusalem, human royalty lives in the presence of and as neighbors to the King of Kings in his holy temple.
“And the Lord God planted a garden…” (Gen 2:8). God plants a garden in Eden, a lush and verdant space bursting with natural life and beauty, and he places Adam there to dwell with him. In 1 Kgs 6–7, God commands Solomon to ornament the temple where he will reside among and meet with his people with carvings of gourds, palm trees, open flowers, lily-work, and pomegranates. The temple is deliberately constructed to recall the flora of Eden. God’s house is a garden...
Note of Special Interest:
The connections between Gen 1–3 and later descriptions of the tabernacle and temple have been surveyed in varying levels of detail by the likes of L. Michael Morales, Who Shall Ascend the Mountain of the Lord?: A Biblical Theology of the Book of Leviticus, NSBT 37 (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2015); G. K. Beale, The Temple and the Church’s Mission: A Biblical Theology of the Dwelling Place of God, NSBT 17 (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004); Gordon J. Wenham, “Sanctuary Symbolism in the Garden of Eden Story,” in I Studied Inscriptions from before the Flood, ed. R. S. Hess and D. T. Tsumara (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1994); Meredith G. Kline, Kingdom Prologue: Genesis Foundations for a Covenantal Worldview, (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2006); Peter J. Gentry and Stephen J. Wellum, Kingdom through Covenant: A Biblical-Theological Understanding of the Covenants, (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2012); Stephen G. Dempster, Dominion and Dynasty: A Theology of the Hebrew Bible, NSBT 15 (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2003); Peter J. Leithart, A House for My Name: A Survey of the Old Testament (Moscow, ID: Canon Press, 2000); James B. Jordan, Through New Eyes: Developing a Biblical View of the World (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 1999); T. D. Alexander, From Paradise to Promised Land: An Introduction to the Pentateuch, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2002). At the beginning of my discussion of each parallel feature, I indicate representative scholars who make similar observations for the reader’s reference.
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