Exodus: Unity of Law and Grace

The Candlestick or Lampstand

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Pentateuch

Lesson: The Candlestick or Lampstand

Genre: Lessons with Q & A

Track: 91

Dictation Name: RR171AX91

Location/Venue:

Year: Early 70’s

Let us worship God. Our help is in the name of the Lord who made heaven and earth. The hour cometh and now is when the true worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for the Father seeketh such to worship Him. God is a spirit and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth. Let us pray.

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we give thanks unto thee again for the blessings of the week past, for thine unfailing mercies which are new every morning. O Lord, our God, how often we, who seek what is best for ourselves cannot be good to ourselves. But thou art gracious to us who are so often ungracious to thee. Be merciful unto us, heal us of our infirmities, make us strong by thy grace, and empower us for thy service. In Christ’s name, amen.

Our scripture is Exodus 25:31-40. Our subject: The Candlestick or Lampstand. Exodus 25:31-40. “And thou shalt make a candlestick of pure gold: of beaten work shall the candlestick be made: his shaft, and his branches, his bowls, his knops (or we would say knobs), and his flowers, shall be of the same. And six branches shall come out of the sides of it; three branches of the candlestick out of the one side, and three branches of the candlestick out of the other side: three bowls made like unto almonds, with a knop (or knob) and a flower in one branch; and three bowls made like almonds in the other branch, with a knop and a flower: so in the six branches that come out of the candlestick. And in the candlesticks shall be four bowls made like unto almonds, with their knops and their flowers. And there shall be a knop under two branches of the same, and a knop under two branches of the same, and a knop under two branches of the same, according to the six branches that proceed out of the candlestick. Their knops and their branches shall be of the same: all it shall be one beaten work of pure gold. And thou shalt make the seven lamps thereof: and they shall light the lamps thereof, that they may give light over against it. And the tongs thereof, and the snuffdishes thereof, shall be of pure gold. Of a talent of pure gold shall he make it, with all these vessels. And look that thou make them after their pattern, which was shewed thee in the mount.”

We are again confronted with the fact that the tabernacle and its furnishing were extremely costly. The candlestick, or lampstand, with its snuff dishes and the tongs were made of pure gold. These alone represented considerable wealth. The various spirituals, or spiritual groups, of the medieval era, and the Anabaptists and evangelicals or our era who insist on plain or cheap houses of worship are not in harmony with God’s law. Those who relegate such emphasis on architectural and structural beauty and costliness to the Old Testament era have a problem. The earliest known churches maintained the same emphasis. It was probably at least two hundred years before any churches were built, but for generations thereafter, the first churches built were made of stone. Their interiors resembled a palace, the sanctuary in particular. An actual fact, the sanctuary was designed as a throne room for Christ the king. Later, it became the throne of the bishop, but originally, the whole thing concentrated on the fact, this was a throne room of Christ the king.

The congregation stood for the reading of scripture because it was the king speaking through his word. In the modern era, congregations remain seated because now, with a Bible in hand, they can thereby better follow closely the king’s law word, but the reading of scripture has historically and theologically been seen as the time when the king proclaims his law.

The central focus was and should be on the word of the great king given to his people in his throne room. As in Israel of old, and in Judaism, God’s word meant and means His presence. Judaism used, before and after Christ, the word “memre{?}” or utterance, and would cite, for example, Deuteronomy 1:31, “Yet in this thing ye did not believe the Lord your God,” as “ye have not believed in the memre{?} of the Lord.” As Rabbi Israel Abrahams wrote, and I quote, “Thus the memre{?} connotes the manifestation of God’s power in creating the world and directing history. It acts as His messenger, and is generally analogous to the divine presence and the divine wisdom.” What this tells us is simply this: The presence of God requires and creates the beauty of the sanctuary, and a key aspect of the presence of God is His word. Hence, the requirement of beauty and glory is not less urgent for Christian as it was for ancient Israel.

There is a curious sidelight here on the association of the word of God with the presence of God, and it comes out of my own experience. I have found that occultists are far more ready to believe in God’s presence and His word than are churchmen, and they sometimes use the Bible abusively in their rites as they assault God. They feel that God is present in His word, and therefore they include it in their meetings in order to show their hatred of God by attacking Him. One man, who ended a suicide, was in a compulsive war against God and the person of the Bible. He had no Christian background in his family and had come to this belief on his own, out of his own experience with occultism.

Lampstand, with its vessels, was made of a talent of gold, according to verse 39. As best we know, this is about 108 pounds [?]. It contained about the same amount of gold as in 6,150 English gold Sovereigns. As of the prices this month for gold Sovereigns in that number, this would come to well over $600,000 for the lampstand, tongs, and snuffdishes. Even if a talent were no more than about two-thirds of that, as one or two scholars have suggested, it was still a fortune in gold. It would still be at least $400,000 worth.

Exodus 20, or rather 27:20-21, seem to indicate that the candlesticks burned continually, and also that they burned from night to morning only as Leviticus 24:2 seems to imply. That the Mishna{?} and Josephus tell us that all seven lamps burned at night and one, two, or three by day. The design of the candlesticks on the lampstands was to resemble a stylized form of an almond tree. Perhaps this looked ahead to Aaron’s rod that budded, an almond rod. The candlestick, or lampstand, had one main central branch and three side branches on each side. Oil was piped to the seven flower cups which were the burners and held wicks. The knobs held the flower cups. The tongs were trimmers for the wicks and the trimmings were then dropped into the snuffdishes. The candlestick, or lampstand, or menorah was, as we have seen, a stylized almond tree. It was a tree of light, and light is universally associated with life. It was therefore a representation of the Tree of Life. Thus, according to the Bible, the Tree of Life was an almond tree, not an apple tree.

In both Israel and in Judaism since, the menorah became a symbol both of the place of worship and of the home. In the New Testament times, to extinguish the menorah was a symbol or disaster. The presence of this lampstand in both home and synagogue was a witness to the centrality of the family and house of worship in nourishing life. The Tree of Life nourishing life.

Light and lampstands do not lack their place in biblical terms, as representations of the realities of God’s world. We are told of our Lord and He is light and in Him is no darkness at all, because He is the light of the world. Christians are to be those who are in spiritual darkness, to them the light of the world. In Revelation 1:10-13, the church is compared to the menorah; the seven golden candlesticks. The church is represented and also our Lord Jesus Christ, who is our Tree of Life, as the golden lampstand.

U.Z. Rule said, and I quote, “Now there was the burning of the seven lamps and the one golden candlestick. This, too, was an offering of oil, but it was an offering not of oil simply but of oil burning and so giving light. It cannot be without significance that it was said, ‘and they shall light the lamps thereof to give light over against it.’ That lamps are intended to give light is so obvious that this use of them surely need not have been stated unless there had been some significance intended in the light giving. Now throughout the Old Testament, the burning of a light is significant of brightness and joy, and the burning of these lamps signified the gladness with which God’s people rendered Him service and came into His presence. It was their confession of this and reflexively, it was a pledge of the gladness which God would continue to shed upon them. Ney, also of the gladness with which He received their service. Here again, this was the gladness of a covenant relationship, and the lamps represented in symbol what was afterwards expressed in such words as in thy presence is the fullness of joy. Thou wilt light my lamp, the Lord will lighten my darkness. That gladness is an integral part of the covenant duty to God is seen in Isaiah 11:3, and Philippians 4:4.”

According to verse 36, the entire lampstand was to be made of one piece, or ingot, of gold. According to the Talmud, its height was three short cubits, whatever a short cubit was. Its depiction in the Arch of Titus indicates a rather large lampstand and it was one of the great trophies of that emperor.

Now, the menorah, or lampstand, or candlestick, and the memre, or utterance are two very different things, but they are not unrelated. God’s memre, or utterances are covenant words. The Bible is God’s covenant word. It is a law book testifying to God’s legal contract with His people, and His presence in their midst. There is, therefore, a direct connection between God’s memre, His word, and the covenant. The golden lampstand representing the Tree of Life, looks back to the Garden of Eden where God was in full communion with man, and ahead to Jesus Christ, who restores the covenant bond and community. A familiar image of the Bible is that of God’s word as a lamp, “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.” The covenant word is a guiding and protecting light. God gives us His covenant law word as a mercy to us, as a light upon our way.

Now, returning to the objection of some to beauty and glory in God’s houses of worship, we have to add another objection to all such views. They are clearly unbiblical. They represent an esthetic stoicism rather than biblical faith. The Stoics cultivated an indifference to material things, to human feelings of loss, sorrow for loved ones, and in fact, an indifference to life itself. Theirs was essentially a suicidal belief, and its roots were in Eastern philosophies of world and life negation. They were, thus, in radical opposition to biblical faith. The Christian affirms the glory of life, even in suffering, because life and the universe are God-created, and they have a glorious purpose. The fact of sin is real, but it is not natural to creation. It is a hostile force within it, which is doomed to perish.

Hence, the beauty of the earth is God’s creation, and as men and women created in His image, we have a duty to further the beauty of His creation in all that we build, and all that we do, and in all that we are. The great work of art, at all times, of course, must be our lives. Let us pray.

Our Father, thy word is truth and thy word is a lamp indeed unto us. We thank thee that we, who through Adam, were separated from the Tree of Life, are in Jesus Christ restored to Him. That life is our future, as well as our present, that we are members, citizens, of the new creation. How great and marvelous thou art, our Father, and we praise thee. In Christ’s name, amen. Are there any questions now about our lesson? Yes?

[Audience] {?} In flight from the {?} you mentioned how many people live in an imaginary world, based on TV, movies, and so forth, and of course, the debasement of literature in the United States and the removal of the Bible from ordinary education has done a lot to escalate that decline.

[Rushdoony] Yes. I read some years back a statement that, and it was not by a Christian, that the ability to write was declining as knowledge of the King James Bible was declining, because a sense of the music and majesty of words was lost in the modern translations, and people were growing up without a knowledge of how beautiful language can be. This is also evident in the separation of people from things that were once a part of their church life. The three great classics of the early years of the Reformation were: Luther’s Of the Bondage of the Will, a magnificent piece of work, Calvin’s Institutes, and then third, The Book of Common Prayer, and the language of all three is magnificent, and then there was a fourth which a generation or two later cam along, Westminster Confession and Catechisms. Now, and a time when everyone was reared with a knowledge of those things, a sense of the magnificence and the meaning of language was overwhelming. People moved in a realm of beauty and meaning, which is now gone, and it’s appalling to see how pedestrian the language of new translations, which are really paraphrase can be, and how the revised Book of Common Prayer is. It’s someone said, all these things have been done with tin ears. I think it was Edmund Wilson who made that statement. So, the loss has been very real. Any other questions or comments?

We have, let me add, something we touched on at a previous meeting, what Dr. David Estrada-Herrero has called attention to, the enthronement now of the ugly. There is a distrust of beauty. I was reading recently a book of poems by someone who is a prize winner, and his poetry is regarded as very great, and so on, and the thing that came through to me was that this man was deliberately destroying the beauty of his own writing. He would start with a statement that was going to ring with magnificence and a beauty, and then he would deliberately foul it up, because there was a thorough distrust of anything that rang of poetry in the historic sense. Yes?

[Audience] Well, they’ve built in the class struggle. Elevated language is supposed to be part of the upper class and therefore, against the people.

[Rushdoony] Yes, yes. Language debased to show that you are a member of the proletariat. Yes. That’s very true. Well, I’ve been doing some reading which points in that direction. The idea of a golden age was very prevalent among the classical writers, Greek and Roman. Cicero and others insisted on original state of perfection. A state of innocence would be better, and then said that man fell, and most writers have said the classical writers, at this point, were very close to the biblical perspective, but in fact, they were as far from it as could be, and I’m in the process of writing about this. In the Bible, the fall is man’s rebellion against God and his desire to be as God. In the vision of the Greek and Roman writers, and Seneca most clearly, the fall was from a state of common ownership of all things into private property, and as a result, there was always, in the classical culture, the idea that Plato’s Republic represented. This idea was picked up by a great many of the church Fathers who were otherwise sometimes magnificent thinkers but, having been brought up, in some cases, most of their lives, on Cicero and Seneca and Plato, they simply adapted the Bible to that type of idea of the fall. Best example of this, or you might say the worst, was St. Ambrose, who was acclaimed by the public, and made bishop by acclamation, and then ordained as a priest and then a bishop after he had been elected, and he was a very remarkable man, and fearless man who stood up to the Emperor, but who also had Senecan ideas of the fall, and felt that when Christians became truly Christian, they would live in that state of nature, or communism. So, this idea in the Middle Ages led to a great many movements that were totally at war with everything in the way of magnificence in the church building, and who felt that was very, very evil, and you had the same temperament in many of the Anabaptists and in many of the groups in Protestantism since. It is an impetus to which the liberation theologians are appealing, and it accounts for part of their success. So, it’s been a long, long strand of this type of thinking which has never been clearly marked out for the evil that it is. Are there any other comments? Well, if not, let us conclude with prayer.

Our Father, we give thanks unto thee that in the midst of a world of evil, thy word is a lamp unto us, a light that overwhelms the darkness, a light that promises the end of the darkness around us. We thank thee that, by thy grace and mercy, our eyes have been opened and that we now see and understand those things that are of thy kingdom. Teach us to grow in those things and bless us in thy service. And now go in peace. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost bless you and keep you, guide and protect you this day and always. Amen.

End of tape.