112 



PROFESSOR JAMES ORR, U.D., ON THE 



torn. The tabernacle could not for three or four centuries 

 retain the fresh, beautiful appearance it had from the first, and, 

 with general adherence to the original model, would undergo 

 repair, replacement, and, as need required, modification. There 

 is no necessity, therefore, for supposing that the " Tent of 

 Meeting," as it existed at Shiloh and l^oh, was in every 

 particular an exact facsimile of the original wilderness 

 structure. 



In this connection an interesting corroboration of the histor- 

 icity of the tabernacle may be based on the identity of the sacred 

 .ark in pre- Solomonic and Solomonic times. I have often 

 wondered that the implications of this identity are not more 

 dwelt upon than they are. There was much that was new in 

 Solomon's temple, but it should carefully be observed that the 

 ark at least was not new. There is little dispute that it was the 

 one Mosaic ark which, after many vicissitudes, was brought up, 

 and deposited by Solomon in liis new house, where it remained 

 till the destruction of the temple by Nebuchadnezzar. The 

 notices we have of this ark — its cherubim (i Samuel iv, 4), the 

 staves by which it was borne, and the tables of stone it 

 contained (i Kings viii, 7-9) — show that it answered so far 

 to the description of the ark in Exodus. The suggestion that 

 the cherubim are an unhistorical addition (Driver, etc.) is opposed 

 not only by the text of the LXX, which agrees with the Hebrew, 

 but by the nature of the case. What motive could exist for 

 interpolating the two small cherubim of the ark, while Solomon's 

 temple, with its large overshadowing cherubim, still stood ? 

 The passage in I Kings mentioning the staves and the tables 

 of stone was written while the temple still existed — " there they 

 are," it is said of the staves, " unto this day " (viii, 8). In 

 Deuteronomy also, even if we relegate that book to the age of 

 Josiah, the ark of acacia wood and its contents are described in 

 accordance with the ark of Exodus (Deuteronomy ix, 1-5). In 

 any case, and this is the essential point, there must have been a 

 familiarity with the form and nature of the ark up till the very 

 end of the temple, and if priestly writers described it in the 

 exile, they could hardly have ventured on a wide divergence 

 from the reality. On the theory that the tabernacle was a copy, 

 in reduced form, of the temple, we must suppose that the ark of the 

 tabernacle was a copy also, and this guarantees that the descrip- 

 tion given of it corresponded very much with the reality of the 

 Mosaic ark. It was, in fact, the one ark, the character of which 

 was well known in exilian times, that persisted to the very end. 

 What follows from this ? Ark and tabernacle go closely 



