Monday 9th January
Read Isaiah 66:1-2
“This is what the Lord says:
‘Heaven is my throne,
and the earth is my footstool.
Where is the house you will build for me?
Where will my resting-place be?
2 Has not my hand made all these things,
and so they came into being?’
declares the Lord.” (NIVUK)
If heaven and earth is an enormous cosmic building, what type of building is it? Whilst some may consider it a royal palace, fit for a king – Isaiah provides some light on the purpose of creation. There will be a time when Israel will seek to build a temple for Yahweh after their return from exile. Yahweh questions the need for a temple built by human hands – after all He fashioned His own temple out of the cosmos! He sits enthroned in heaven. Just as Isaiah himself saw.
“In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord, high and exalted, seated on a throne; and the train of his robe filled the temple. 2 Above him were seraphim, each with six wings: with two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. 3 And they were calling to one another:
‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty;
the whole earth is full of his glory.’
4 At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke.” (Isaiah 6:1-4) (NIVUK)
Creation is a temple for the exalted and glorious Lord. Richard Middleton observes that the parallels that Isaiah sees between creation and temple explain the in-built correspondence between the instructions for the building of the tabernacle (Exodus 25-31) and the creation narrative in Genesis 1. The overwhelming repetition of sevens. Seven days of creation, seven times we are told ‘and it was so’, seven times we are told ‘God saw that it was good’, 35 times ‘God’ is mentioned, 21 times ‘earth’, seven Hebrew words in the first verse and 14 Hebrew words in the second, etc… The most concentrated echo of this number of ‘sevens’ is found in the instructions for the tabernacle construction, followed by when the feasts occur (7th day of the seventh month), the number of feasts, etc. Just as creation is a temple for the Lord, so the tabernacle is its earthly mirror.
The wisdom woven into the early words of John’s gospel become that much richer. The echoes with Genesis 1 are clear from the first line: ‘In the beginning…’ but spend time today meditating on the richness of his conclusion that “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14) (NIVUK)
