Hebrews 9:4

χρυσοῦν … θυμιατήριον. It has been long disputed whether θυμιατήριον means Censer or Altar of Incense. It does not occur in the Greek version of the Pentateuch (except as a various reading), where the “altar of incense” is rendered by θυσιαστήριον θυμιάματος (Exodus 30:27; comp. Luke 1:11); but it is used by the LXX. in 2 Chronicles 26:19; Ezekiel 8:11, and there means “censer”; and the Rabbis say that “a golden censer” was used by the High Priest on the Day of Atonement only (Yoma, IV. 4). “Censer” accordingly is the rendering of the word in this place in the Vulgate, Syriac, Arabic, and Aethiopic versions; and the word is so understood by many commentators ancient and modern. On the other hand (which is very important) both in Josephus (Antt. III. 6, § 8) and in Philo (Opp. I. 504) the word θυμιατήριον means “the Altar of Incense,” which, like the table, might be called “golden,” because it was overlaid with gold; and this is the sense of the word in other Hellenistic writers of this period down to Clemens of Alexandria. The Altar of Incense was so important that it is most unlikely to have been left unmentioned. Further, it is observable that we are not told of any censer kept in the Tabernacle, but only in the Temple. The incense in the days of the Tabernacle was burnt in a מַחְתָּה (πυρεῖον, “brazier,” Leviticus 16:12); nor could the censer have been kept in the Holiest Place, for then the High Priest must have gone in to fetch it before kindling the incense, which would have been contrary to all the symbolism of the ritual.

But it is asserted that the writer is in any case mistaken, for that neither the censer nor the “altar of incense” was in the Holiest.

But this is not certain as regards the censer. It is possible that some golden censer-stand may have stood in the Holiest, on which the High Priest placed the small golden brazier (machettah, LXX. πυρεῖον), which he carried with him. There is indeed no doubt that the “Altar of Incense” was not in the Holiest Place, but as all authorities combine in telling us, in the Holy Place. But there was a possibility of mistake about the point, because in Exodus 26:35 only the table and the lampstand are mentioned; and Exodus 30:6 is a little vague. Yet the writer does not say that the altar of incense was in the Holiest. It was impossible that any Jew should have made such a mistake, unless he were, as Delitzsch says, “a monster of ignorance”; and if he had been unaware of the fact otherwise, he would have found from Philo in several places (De Victim. Offer. § 4; Quis rer. div. haer. § 46) that the Altar, which Philo also calls θυμιατήριον, was outside the Holiest. Josephus also mentions this, and it was universally notorious (B. J. Hebrews 9:5, § 5). Accordingly, the writer only says that the Holiest “had” the Altar of Incense, in other words that the Altar in some sense belonged to it. And this is rigidly accurate; for in 1 Kings 6:22 the Altar is described as “belonging to” the Oracle (lit. the Altar which was to the Oracle, laddebîr), and on the Day of Atonement the curtain was drawn, and the Altar was intimately associated with the High Priest’s service in the Holiest Place. Indeed the Altar of Incense (since incense was supposed to have an atoning power, Numbers 16:47) was itself called “Holy of Holies” (A. V. “most holy,” Exodus 30:10), and is expressly said (Exodus 30:6; Exodus 40:5) to be placed “before the mercy-seat.” In Isaiah 6:1-8 a seraph flies from above the mercy-seat to the Altar. The writer then, though he is not entering into details with pedantic minuteness, has not made any mistake; nor is there the smallest ground for the idle conjecture that he was thinking of the Jewish Temple at Leontopolis. The close connexion of the Altar of Incense with the service of the Day of Atonement in the Holiest Place is illustrated by 2Ma 2:1-8, where the Altar is mentioned in connexion with the Ark.

τὴν κιβωτόν. This, as we have seen, applies only to the Tabernacle and to Solomon’s Temple. “There was nothing whatever,” as Josephus tells us, in the Holiest Place of the Temple after the Exile (B. J. Hebrews 9:5, § 5). The stone on which the Ark had once stood, called by the Rabbis “the stone of the Foundation,” alone was visible.

πάντοθεν. The word rendered “round about” means literally “on all sides,” i.e. “within and without” (Exodus 25:11).

χρυσίῳ. The diminutive χρυσίῳ here used for gold seems to imply nothing distinctive. Diminutives always tend to displace the simple forms in late dialects.

στάμνος χρυσῆ. The Palestine Targum says that it was an earthen jar, but Jewish tradition asserted that it was of gold. The LXX. inserts the word “golden” in Exodus 16:33 and so does Philo. It contained an “omer” of the manna, which was the daily portion for each person. The writer distinctly seems to imply that the Ark contained three things—a golden jar (στάμνος) containing a specimen of the manna, Aaron’s rod that budded, and the Stone Tables of the Decalogue. Here again it is asserted that he made a mistake. Certainly the Stone Tables were in the Ark, and the whole symbolism of the Ark represented the Cherubim bending in adoration over the blood-sprinkled propitiatory which covered the tables of the broken moral law. But Moses was only bidden to lay up the jar and the rod “before the Testimony,” not “in the Ark”; and in 1 Kings 8:9; 2 Chronicles 5:10 we are somewhat emphatically informed that “there was nothing in the Ark” except these two tables, which we are told (Deuteronomy 10:2; Deuteronomy 10:5) that Moses placed there. All that can be said is that the writer is not thinking of the Temple of Solomon at all, and that there is nothing impossible in the Jewish tradition here followed, which supposes that “before the Testimony” was interpreted to mean “in the Ark.” Rabbis like Levi Ben Gershom and Abarbanel had certainly no desire to vindicate the accuracy of the Epistle to the Hebrews, and yet they say that the pot and the rod were actually at one time in the Ark, though they had been removed from it before the days of Solomon.

ἡ ῥαβδός. Numbers 17:6-10.