7. Its Windows And Structures All The Way
BOOK ONE
7. ITS WINDOWS AND STRUCTURES ALL THE WAY
ROUND 7.1
(6:4) And he made for the temple slanting windows. The windows of the temple are the holy teachers and all the spiritual people in the Church to whom when in divine ecstasy it is granted more specially than to the others to see the hidden mysteries of heaven.
And when they reveal publicly to the faithful what they have seen in private, they fill all the inner recesses of the temple as windows do with the sunlight they let in. Hence these windows are appropriately said to have been slanting, i.e. wider on the inside, because, of course, whoever receives a ray of heavenly contemplation even for a moment must expand the bosom of his heart more fully by mortification and prepare it by resourceful asceticism to strive for greater things.
7.2 (65-6) He also built floors upon the wall of the temple all the way round and on the walls of the house running right round the temple and the inner sanctuary; and he made side chambers all the way round. The top floor was five cubits broad, the middle one six cubits broad, and the third seven cubits broad.' In the Gospel where the Lord is tempted by the devil these floors are called the pinnacles of the temple.2 But we also read that the apostle James, the brother of the Lord, was lifted to the pinnacle of the temple from which to address the p e ~ p l e . ~ Whether it was the practice of teachers to deliver their address to the people standing around below them while they sat on these floors is something we find nowhere in the scriptures. So what the mystery obviously means is that these three floors denote the corresponding number of levels of the faithful, namely, married people, those who practise continence, and virgins, levels distinguished according to the loftiness of their profession but all of them belonging to the house of the Lord and intently clinging to him by reason of their fellowship in the same faith and truth.
7.3
There it is beautifully put that the top storey was five cubits broad, the middle one six and the third seven. The reason why the top storey was narrower than the rest, the middle one wider than infra 8.4 ** cf. Mt 4 5 cf. Rufinus, Hist. Eccl. 2, 23 GCS 9:169,17-21
BEDE: ON THE TEMPLE
the top but made narrower than the bottom one was that the higher profession of virtue ought to follow a higher way of life. For those who have renounced the bond of marriage and consecrated their virginity to the Lord ought to give evidence of behaviour consonant with virginity, abstain from useless talk, anger, quarrelling, detraction, immodest dress, carousing, drinking, strife and jealousy, and earnestly give themselves instead to holy vigils, prayer, divine readings and psalms, to doctrine and almsgiving and the other fruits of the Spirit4 so that those who by profession follow the state of the life to come in which they will neither many nor be given in marriage but be as the angels in heaven5 may strive to imitate the state of that life so far as is possible for mortals in the present life. But the bottom storey was of greater width because married people are not told, Go, sell what you possess and give it to the pool;6 but, Ifyou would enter lfe, keep the commandments: you shall not kill, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not bear false witness,7 and so forth. Those who practise continence occupy a place midway between these, as far below virgins as they are higher than married people, whose most glorious portion built the original church in Jerusalem, as Luke puts it when he writes that the multitude of the believers had but one heart and one soul,a and so forth, and the fact that the majority of them had renounced the embrace of their wives is attested by the story of St Stephen where he calls the women who professed the same religion not their spouses but their widow^.^ 7.4
Each floor, however, had sides all round it, i.e. little breastworks, in case anyone standing or sitting on these floors should fall on to the lower ones, which, as we read, happened to king Ahaziah in Samaria." These sides not inappropriately denote the safeguards of God's daily protection of us of which the psalmist says, The angel of the Lord shall encamp around those who fear him, and shall deliver
(1641 cf. Ga 5:20-22; Rm 1:2&32 MI 22:30
MI 19:21
Mt 19:17-18 Ac 432 cf. Ac 6.1 lo cf. 4 K 1:2
BOOK ONE
them."
Ahaziah king of Samaria who had separated himself from the house of David did indeed go up to the upper-room, but he fell through the railings because, although heretics or schismatics seem to scale some peak of good work, nevertheless, because they lack the structure of the Church's unity, the protecting side-walls are, as it were, gaping wide open and weak, and consequently, they (the heretics and schismatics) are continually falling back into the depths of their vices until, deprived of God's help, they perish through their arrogance and obstinacy.
7.5
The technique used to attach the aforesaid floors to the temple walls is made clear in the text which follows:
(6:6) He put beams in the house all the way round on the outside, that they might not be fastened in the walls of the temple. Therefore, the the beams which reinforced and adorned the house inside were of such a length that their ends were jutting out seven cubits in the bottom level, six in the middle one and five in the top one, and in these ends the floors were set, not in such a way that they were inserted into the temple walls but laid on beams which were beside the walls and protruded from the walls. Who then except preachers are typified by the beams of the house which supported the floors?
And while occupying a lofty and privileged place in the Church of God, they enable all the weaker and frail ones by their sermons to rise above the cravings of the basest and raise them to long and hope for heavenly things and also help them by their intercession to persevere in what they have undertaken.
7.6
On the other hand, we read in the Book of Paralipomenon that the beams of the temple like the rest of its interior were adorned with gold.12 There is no doubt that this was done in such a way that those portions of the beams which were inside the temple were covered with gold leaf, but that those which showed outside were not gilded in order to show the actual graining and beauty of the cedarwood while supporting the floors which were laid on them. Therefore, the portion of the beams which protruded outside denotes the life of the saints which could become known to us on earth; the gilded portion which gleamed inside the temple represents figuratively that Ps33:8 l2 cf. 2 Paralip 3:7
BEDE: ON THE TEMPLE
brightness whereby they rejoice in their heavenly country in the sight of their creator. This golden brightness of the beams was visible only to those who had entered the temple, because only those who have merited to enter the kingdom of heaven know how great is the abundance of the sweetness of God which he has laid up for those who fear him and has perfected for those who hope in him.13 And yet when through contemplating the life, sufferings and teaching of the saints, or reading of them in books, we are moved by their example, we are lifted from the earth, as it were, by the outwardly visible ends of the beams because, although we are as yet unable to see clearly the inner glory of the saints, nevertheless from what we have been able to see from the outside we faithfully adhere to the members of the Church who are in heaven above. We can also apply this to the saints who are still in this life. The purity of their love which makes them shine in the recesses of the heart before the Lord we cannot penetrate; nevertheless we find help for our salvation from those things which are externally visible whether in word or action or suffering.
(1651 7.7 (6:7) And when the house was being built it was with stones hewn and dressed, so that neither hammer nor axe nor any tool of iron was heard in the house while it was being built. This properly pertains to the part of the Church which after the toils and struggles of this life has merited admittance to eternal rewards. There, indeed, only the perfect and spotless and those purified from every stain of iniquity enter. For nothing defiled shall enter that city, nor anyone who practises abomination or falsehood, as John has written in the Apocalyp~e.'~ No hammer, axe or any iron implement is heard because here below we are hammered by adversities and trained by the teaching of truth so that there we may be ranged in appropriate places according to our deserts and so that when our purification is over we may be filled with the one Spirit and bathed in the glue of love to bind us to each other. Moreover, although scripture speaks of Noah, a man perfect in his gener~tions'~ and says, Blessed are the undefiled in the way,16 and other things of the kind, no one can l3 cf. Ps. 30:20 l4 cf. Rv 21:27 l5 Gn 6:9 lG Ps118:l