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Chapter
Three
The Symbolic Veil
The veil of the tabernacle
was hung between the holy place and the holiest of all. Inside of it were
the Ark of the Covenant, the mercy-seat, and the cherubim; outside were the
golden altar of incense, the golden candlestick, or lamp-stand, and the
table of shew-bread or “presence-bread,” the twelve loaves that were placed
before Jehovah.
Properly there were three veils or curtains for the
tabernacle.
The outermost hung at the entrance of the tabernacle;
and was always drawn aside, or might be so by any Israelite that wished to
pass into the outer court, where the brazen altar and brazen laver were.
That veil hindered no one, and concealed nothing. It was an ever-open door;
at which any Israelite might come in with his sacrifice. It was at this door
that the priest met the comer and examined his sacrifice to see if it were
without blemish; for no blemished offering could pass the threshold; and the
bringer of a blemished sacrifice must go back unaccepted and unblest. The
Priest rejected him and his victim. He must go and get another bullock, or
else bear his own sin. [1]
The second veil hung at the entrance of the holy
place. It allowed any one to look in; but it prohibited the entrance
of all but Priests. “Now when these things were thus ordained (arranged or
set up) the priests went always (were continually going) into the first
tabernacle (what we usually call the second), accomplishing the service of
God” (Heb. 9:6). They fed at the royal table there; they kept the lamps
burning; they put incense on the golden altar. But they could enter no
farther. The way into the holiest was not yet opened; the time had not yet
come when the three places should be made one; all veils removed; all
exclusions cancelled; all sprinkled with one blood; open freely to each
coming one: altar, laver, table, candlestick, incense-altar, ark, and
mercyseat no longer separated, but brought together as being but parts of
one glorious whole; divided from each other for a season, for the sake of
distinct teaching and for the exhibition of sacrificial truth in its
different parts and aspects; but in the fulness of time brought together; as
being but one perfect picture of the one perfect sacrifice, by means of
which we have access to God and reentrance into the Paradise which we had
lost.
The third veil hung before the holy of holies: hiding,
as it were, God from man and man from God, and intimating that the day of
full meeting and fellowship had not yet come. It said to Israel, and it said
to man (for all these things had a world-wide meaning), God is
within; but you cannot enter now. The time is coming; but it is not yet.
In heathen temples there were veils hiding their holy
places. But these pointed to no coming manifestation; no future unveiling
of Him who was supposed to dwell within. These veils were but parts of the
idolatry and darkness of the system; not proclamations of truth or promises
of light. It was not so in the tabernacle. The veil that hid the glory was a
promise of the revelation of that glory. In pagan shrines it was a signal of
distress and despair; man’s declaration that there was no hope of light;
that the unknown must always be the unknown; nay, that the unknown was also
the unknowable; and that the unapproached was also the unapproachable. In
Israel’s shrine the veil was a thing of light, not of darkness; it was a
covering, no doubt, but it was also a revelation. It told what God
was; where God was, and how God could be approached.
That it was not a gate,—of iron or brass, of
silver or of gold,—said much; that it was a veil of needlework, slight and
moveable, said more. For it intimated that the hindrance in the way of the
worshipper’s nearer approach was slender and temporary. The nature of a tent
intimated among other things its removeableness: “mine age is
departed, and is removed from me as a shepherd’s tent” (Isa. 38:12).
The nature of a veil in a tent intimates still greater slightness and
removeableness. It was a thing which could easily be drawn aside, nay, which
was, at the needed season, to be taken away. It was no wall of obstruction,
but simply of temporary separation and exclusion, to be done away with in
due time.
But while it was slight it was very beautiful. It is
thus described:—“And thou shalt make a veil of blue, and purple, and
scarlet, and fine-twined linen, of cunning work: with cherubims shall it be
made: and thou shalt hang it upon four pillars of shittim wood, overlaid
with gold: their hooks shall be of gold upon the four sockets of silver”
(Ex. 26:31, 32). Of the veil made by Solomon for the temple on Moriah it is
said, “He made the veil of blue, and purple, and crimson, and fine linen,
and wrought cherubims thereon” (2 Chron. 3:14).
The temple-veil seems to have been thicker and of
course larger every way, than that of the tabernacle. It is said to have
been about twenty feet in height, and as much in width, strongly wrought and
finely woven. It was never drawn, or at least only so much of it was moved
aside once a-year as to admit the High Priest, when he approached the
mercy-seat with blood and incense. For ages it stretched across that awful
entrance, a more immoveable barrier than brass or iron: no Priest, or
Levite, or Israelite venturing within its folds. Torn down again and again
in different centuries, by the Babylonian, Persian, Grecian, and Roman
invader, it was often replaced, that it might hang there, to teach its
wondrous lessons, till God’s great purpose with it had been fulfilled.
To the Jew of old there must have seemed something
mysterious about that veil. It was not hung up merely to conceal what was
within, as if God grudged to man the full vision of His glory, or had no
desire to be approached. Many things connected with its texture and place
showed that this was not the case. The unspiritual Jew of course was very
likely to misjudge its use and import; and the historian Josephus is a
specimen of that class. He seems to have had not the most distant idea of
its use. [2]
But the Israelite who had discernment in the things of God would see
something far higher and nobler than this, though he might not understand it
fully in connection with Messiah. Still he would see in that veil something
glorious; something which both attracted and repelled; something which hid
and revealed; something which spoke of himself and of his Messiah; for he
knew that every thing pertaining to that tabernacle, and specially these on
which cherubim were wrought, had reference to Messiah the Deliver, the seed
of the woman, the man with the bruised heel.
All the curtains of the tabernacle had more or less
the same reference. For on all of them the same devices were wrought. “Thou
shalt make the tabernacle with ten curtains of fine‑twined linen, and blue,
and purple, and scarlet: with cherubims of cunning work shalt thou make
them” (Ex. 26:1, 36:8). The cherubim-figure was to be seen everywhere.
That mysterious device which was first placed in Paradise, and which for
ages had disappeared, was now reproduced in connection with the tabernacle.
Since the garden of the Lord had been swept away (probably at the flood),
the cherubim had not been seen; though doubtless tradition had handed down
the memory of their appearance, and to Israel they were not strangers. Moses
is now commanded to restore them. From Noah to Moses the Church had been a
wanderer, with no sanctuary, only an altar to worship at. Yet, doubtless,
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob knew well about the cherubim; and when Moses was
instructed to replace them he does not require to have their nature
explained. They are now to be inwoven into the sanctuary,—that
sanctuary which symbolized nothing less than Messiah Himself; teaching us
that (whatever these cherubim might mean) the cherubim and Messiah were all
“of one.” The Church is represented in the tabernacle as one with Christ,
“members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones.” Israel was taught
that “the Church in the wilderness” (Acts 7:38) was as truly the body of
Christ as the Church at Pentecost.
But however vague might be the ideas of the old Jew
regarding the veil, it could not but be viewed as very peculiar, something
by itself; part of the tabernacle furniture no doubt, yet a singular and
unique part of it; in texture, in position, and in use, quite peculiar:
exquisite as a piece of workmanship,—every colour and thread of which it was
composed being symbolic and vocal. But still it was the frailest part of the
fabric,‑a strange contrast, in after days when the temple was built, with
the massive marble walls and cedar beams, with which it was surrounded. For
the temple was in all respects magnificent,—even as a piece of
architecture. Its enormous foundations were let in to the solid rock; its
vast stones, each in itself a wall, rose tier above tier; its gates were of
solid brass, so weighty, that one of them required twenty men to open and
shut it. It thus presented a solid mass to view more like a part of the
mountain than a mere building upon it.
But the veil was a thing which a child’s hand could
draw aside; and it was hung just where we should have expected a gate of
brass or a wall of granite,—at the entrance into the holiest of all,—to
guard against the possibility of intrusion. Its frail texture in the midst
of so much that was strong and massive, said that it was but a temporary
barrier,—a screen,—in due time to be removed. The worshipper in the outer
court, as he looked towards it from the outer entrance of the holy place,
would see something of its workmanship, and might perhaps get some glimpses
of the glory within shining through its folds. He would learn this much, at
least, that the way into the holiest was not fully opened; yet it was only
stopped by a veil, no more. He would conclude within himself, that though
shut out now he would one day be allowed to enter and worship at the
mercy-seat, or at something better than that mercy-seat, at the heavenly
throne, in the true tabernacle which the Lord pitched, and not man, when the
High Priest of good things to come should arrive, and as his forerunner,
lead him into the very presence of that Invisible Jehovah who was now by
symbols showing how He was to be approached and worshipped.
The veil! It hid God from man; for till that should be
done which would make “grace reign through righteousness” (Rom. 5:21), man
could not be allowed to see God face to face. It hid man from God; for till
this “righteousness” was established by the substitution of the just for the
unjust, God could not directly look upon man. It hid the glory of God from
man; it hid the shame of man from God. It so veiled or shaded both the shame
and the glory, that it was possible for God to be near man, and yet not to
repel him; and it was possible for man to be near God and yet not to be
consumed.
The veil! It was let down from above, it did not
spring up from below. It originated in God, and not in man. It was not man
hiding himself from God, but God hiding Himself from man, as His holiness
required, until it should become a right for a holy God and unholy man to
meet each other in peace and love.
And it was sprinkled with blood! For though the
expression “before the veil” (Lev. 4:6) does not necessarily mean that it
was sprinkled on the veil, yet the likelihood is that this was done.
“The seven times, (says a commentator on Leviticus), throughout all
Scripture, intimates a complete and perfect action. The blood is to be
thoroughly exhibited before the Lord; life openly exhibited as taken, to
honour the law that had been violated. It is not at this time taken
within the veil; for that would require the priest to enter the holy of
holies, a thing permitted only once a year. But it is taken very near the
mercy-seat; it is taken ‘before the veil,’ while the Lord that dwelt between
the cherubim bent down to listen to the cry that came up from the
sin‑atoning blood. Was the blood sprinkled on the veil? Some say not; but
only on the floor close to the veil. The floor of the holy place was dyed
with blood; a threshold of blood was formed, over which the High Priest must
pass into on the day of judgment, when he entered into the most holy,
drawing aside the veil. It is blood that opens our way into the presence of
God; it is the voice of atoning blood that prevails with Him who dwells
within. Others, however, with more probability, think that the blood was
sprinkled on the veil. It might intimate that atonement was yet to
rend that veil; and as that beautiful veil represented our Saviour’s holy
humanity (Heb. 10:20), oh, how expressive was the continual repetition of
the ‘blood-sprinkling’ seven times. As often as the Priest offered a
sin‑offering, the veil was wet again with blood, which dropped on the floor.
Is this Christ bathed in the blood of atonement? Yes, through that
veil the veil was opened to us, through the flesh of Jesus, through the body
that for us was drenched in the sweat of blood." [3]
We speak of the blood-sprinkled mercy-seat, and the
blood-sprinkled floor, on which that mercy-seat stood; but let us not forget
the blood-sprinkled pavement, the “new and living way” into the holiest, and
the blood‑sprinkled veil. For “almost all things under the law were purged
with blood, and without shedding of blood is no remission.”
Nor let us forget Gethsemane, where “His sweat was as
it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground.” At His
circumcision, at Gethsemane, at the cross, we see the blood-sprinkled veil.
And all this for us; that the blood which was thus required at His hands
should not be required of us.
ENDNOTES:
1. The true Priest,—“the
High Priest of the good things to come”—stands at the gate to receive all
who come. He refuses none, however imperfect they and their offering may be;
for it is His perfection and His perfect offering that give the right of
entrance to the sinner; He receives all comers. “Him that cometh to me I
will in no wise cast out.”
2. The veils, which
were composed of four things, declared the four elements; for the fine linen
was proper to signify the earth, because the flax grows out of the earth;
the purple signified the sea, because that colour is dyed by the blood of a
sea shell-fish; the blue is fit to signify the air, and the scarlet will be
an indication of fire:”—Antiq. b. iii. chap. 7. sect. 7.
3. Dr. A. A. Bonar’s
Commentary on Leviticus, pp. 68, 69.
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