Heaven on earth... Looking rather like a model, this is in fact St Catherine’s Monastery at the foot of Mount Sinai, a Greek Orthodox monastery founded by the Emperor Justinian in the 6th century. For more information, visit St Catherine’s Monastery Website. Up above on the summit, Moses saw the sanctuary of heaven itself, and returned to the foot of the mountain to pitch a tent for an earthly sanctuary “according the the pattern he saw upon the mount”.
AS a lasting reminder to Israel that God had not forgotten them, Moses now pitched a special tent at some distance from the camp, the Tent of the Congregation.* Inside was a temple fit for the presence of God in the desert, with furniture of wood and beaten gold, decorated with sculpted fruits and angels.* The pillar of cloud and fire that had guided them stood by the door.
There Moses went to speak with God, there sacrifices were offered, and there Joshua remained day and night. So frequently did Moses speak with God there, as friend to friend, that his face shone, and he was compelled to wear a veil to save others from being blinded.*
Moses also returned to the mountain peak, to collect two new stone tablets with God’s law written upon them afresh, and once more he bound Israel to obey it, and forsake all other laws and gods. These stone tablets were kept in a wooden Ark within the tent.*
See Exodus 33. God will lead the Israelites but adds: “I will not go up in the midst of thee; for thou art a stiffnecked people: lest I consume thee in the way”. Hence the tent is pitched outside the camp.
The carvings of the temple here and in Jerusalem played a key part in the Christian arguments in favour of religious art, during the 8th and 9th centuries. See The Restoration of the Icons. The cloth and gold came from the ornaments given to the Israelites by the Egyptians.
This is picked up by St Paul, who applies it to Jews who do not accept Jesus as the Messiah. The Israelites, says Paul, were never quite able to bear the brightest truths of revelation, right from the time of Moses – even their own Scriptures shine too brightly for their hearts’ eyes. But Jesus takes the veil away, and we may look unveiled upon the glory of the Lord in Scripture as in a mirror. See 2 Corinthians 3:12-18. Perfect love even takes away the need for a mirror: see 1 Corinthians 13:11-13. This is a very special grace known in the Eastern Churches as ‘theoria’, when the heart of man is filled overwhelmingly with God’s energies, a fruit of the tradition of watchful prayer known as ‘hesychia’. It was championed, among others, by St Gregory of Sinai (?1260s-1346) though it is very much older.
This Ark of the Covenant held the two tablets of stone, and was kept for generations, being part of the Temple of Solomon consecrated in 966 BC. It was lost to history when the Temple was sacked by the Babylonians in 586 BC. Some Jewish sources say it was taken with other sacred vessels to Babylon, but others say it was hidden, along with a jar of manna.
