Where it says, in the fourth year in the month of Zio,^[1] which is the second month of the reign of Solomon over Israel, the intended order is, in the fourth year of the reign of Solomon in the month of Zio, that is, the second month. He calls the second month May, for April, in which the Pasch, the princi-pal feast among the Hebrews, is held, was the first month of the year.^[2] From this it is quite clear that later when the Pasch was over, he began to build a house for the Lord, and after they had been consecrated by the mystical solemnity, the people set their hands to the mystical task. A commemoration is made of the exodus from Egypt when work began on the building of the tabernacle so that the reader may be made aware what a period of time had passed between the building of both houses and learn the spiritual mystery attaching to this period of time. For four times 120 make 480; now four is very appropriate to evangelical perfection on account of the actual number of the Evangelists; 120 is appropriate to the teaching of the law on account of the same number of years of the legislator.^[3] It was also in this number of men that the primitive church received the grace of the Holy Spirit,^[4] clearly showing that those who use the law legitimately, that is, those who recognize and embrace the grace of Christ in it, are deservedly filled with the grace of his Spirit so that they may become more ardent in his love. ^[5] DAVID HAD PREPARED MATERIALS FOR THE HOUSE. ISHO‘DAD OF MERV: The house that Solomon built for the [Lord] was sixty cubits long, that is, the double of the tabernacle. It is extremely likely that it included two rooms, an interior and an exterior. The interior was twenty cubits long, while the exterior was forty cubits. [The house] was built on the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite,^[1] which David had bought together with the garden.^[2] David had prepared the materials for the construction of the house, as the book of Chronicles reports.^{[3] [4]}

The temple was built of Parian marble, a white stone, to represent the brilliance of chastity in the church, concerning which the Lord says in the canticle of love: Like a lily among thorns, so is my love among maidens.^[1] [The temple] was sixty cubits long, twenty cubits wide and thirty cubits high. The length of the temple designates the faith of the holy church, through which it bears with long-suffering patience, in the midst of its good works, the adversities brought against it by the wicked. The width designates the charity by which [the church] expands inwardly through the essential working of piety. The height designates the hope with which it awaits the rewards of the heavenly life, [which it will receive] as a result of the good deeds it performs through charity.

There was also a porch in front of the temple, twenty cubits in length to correspond with the width of the temple.^[1] It had a door opposite the door of the temple and was ten cubits deep, facing the east. This porch represents the people belonging to holy church who precede the time of our Lord’s incarnation, yet were not empty of faith in his incarnation. This is [the meaning of] the door of the porch opposite the door of the temple, facing the east—that the faith of the people in Christ before his coming was the same as that of those who came after his arrival and that the hearts of all the faithful are illumined by the same light of the grace of the Orient.

The windows of the temple are the holy teachers and all the spiritual people in the church to whom when in divine ecstasy it is granted more specially than to the others to see the hidden mysteries of heaven. And when they reveal publicly to the faithful what they have seen in private, they fill all the inner recesses of the temple as windows do with the sunlight they let in. Hence these windows are appropriately said to have been slanting, that is, wider on the inside, because, of course, whoever receives a ray of heavenly contemplation even for a moment must expand the bosom of his heart more fully by mortification and prepare it by resourceful asceticism to strive for greater things. ^[1] THE USE OF THE SIDE CHAMBERS. ISHO‘DAD OF MERV: Against the sides of the house he made side chambers, that is, some porticos like those built around a basilica, one on the other, in three levels. He did this, in the first place, because the portico was narrow and could not been divided into separate parts; secondly, in order that they might work as a support to the house so that it did not collapse. ^[1]

In the Gospel where the Lord is tempted by the devil these floors are called the pinnacles of the temple.^[1] But we also read that the apostle James, the brother of the Lord, was lifted to the pinnacle of the temple from which to address the people. Whether it was the practice of teachers to deliver their address to the people standing around below them while they sat on these floors is something we find nowhere in the Scriptures. So what the mystery obviously means is that these three floors denote the corresponding number of levels of the faithful, namely, married people, those who practice continence and virgins, levels distinguished according to the loftiness of their profession but all of them belonging to the house of the Lord and intently clinging to him by reason of their fellowship in the same faith and truth.

How, he says, was the hammer of the whole earth broken and crushed? How was Babylon brought to destruction?^[1] One needs to enquire here who is the hammer of all the earth or in what way its brokenness is prophesied, since it was broken before it was crushed, so that after bringing together what has been written elsewhere about the hammer, when we find its name, we will also investigate the meaning of the name from these examples that we have brought forth.

At one time there was constructed a house of God, according to the third book of Kings,^[2] and it was Solomon who built and erected it; and it was said here, as if in praise, about the house of God, that hammer and axe were not heard in the house of God. Therefore as the hammer is not heard in the house of God, since the house of God is the church, so the hammer is not heard in the church. Who is this hammer who wants to obstruct, insofar as he can, the stones for building the temple, so that, broken, they are not suited for its foundations? See with me if the devil is not the hammer of the whole earth.

Christ knocks with his hand that you may open, whereas the adversary cuts the door down with axes; and therefore it is written that hammer and axe should not enter into the house of God. Pride and deceit ought to be outdoors, not inside; conflicts indeed ought to be outside;^[1] but within, the peace that surpasses all understanding.^[2] Let not your soul be cut with the iron, but even as Joseph’s soul, so may your soul pass by the iron.^[3] Otherwise, your ruling part, which is like a kind of tabernacle of the Word, may be destroyed at the very beginning of faith and the entrance into spiritual learning.

The way to the upper and third [parts of the] building was made through the innermost part of the southern wall, as if by an invisible entrance, so that only its beginning might be evident from the eastern corner of the before-mentioned [southern] wall. Only he who could climb [it] knew the progress of this ascent, of which Scripture recalls: The door in the center of the side was on the right [i.e., southern] part of the house, and they ascended by a circular stairway to the middle room and from the middle room to the third. When our Lord was suffering on the cross, one of the soldiers opened his side with a lance, and immediately there came forth blood and water.^[1] This [prefigured] the water of baptism by which we are cleansed [from sin] and the blood of the Lord’s chalice by which we are sanctified. Through these holy mysteries of his side, as a consequence of our invisible faith, we ascend from the present life of the church, in its pilgrimage on earth, to the life of heavenly blessedness that the souls of the righteous enjoy once they have laid aside their bodies. When we have recovered our [earthly] bodies at the [general] resurrection, we will pass over from that life even to the supreme glory of eternal bliss, with our faith in our Lord’s passion leading the way. It is undoubtedly of this glory that Isaiah says, In their own land they will come into possession of a double portion, undying happiness will be theirs,^[2] that is, they will receive the eternal joys of an immortal body and a happy soul together in the land of the living, which is the only land of the saints. The lowest [part of the] building signifies the present way of life of the saints; the middle [part signifies] the repose of souls that is acquired after this life; and the top [part signifies] the glory of the [final] resurrection, which will never be changed and will last forever. The door in the center of the side, which was situated in the right [i.e., southern] part of the building, and which opened up the way to the upper parts, [represents] our faith in the passion of Christ, from whose pierced right side, [while he was hanging] on the cross, there flowed forth the sacraments, by receiving which we will be able to ascend to the joys of heavenly life.

Ceilings are boardwork constructed and adorned with great beauty and fixed to the beams on the lower side, and because the house of the Lord had been built three times the double height, naturally it had three ceilings. What is more fitting for us to believe than these ceilings signify all the just people of most exalted virtue in the holy church? And their work and teaching is held up as an example to all as being much loftier than any other, and by their intercessions and exhortations they keep the spirits of the weak from failing in temptation. These ceilings are indeed rightly described as being of cedarwood. For cedar is by nature a completely incorruptible tree, of pleasant fragrance and luxuriant appearance, and when it is set on fire it drives away and destroys serpents by its dazzling brightness. These things are an apt figure of all the perfect whose patience is indomitable, whose outstanding reputation for virtue is far more pleasing to the good than that of anyone else, whose powers of refuting and proving wrong those who resist the truth are utterly unshakable, and who, both in this life and the life to come, shine with a resplendence that outshines the rest of the saints.

This means the breastworks that were constructed on top of the roof of the house all around in case anyone who came up to the upper parts of the building should suddenly fall to the bottom. And in every house that anyone built, Moses ordered this to be done, saying, When you build a new house, you shall make a parapet for your roof all the way around, lest blood be shed in your house and you be to blame should anyone slip and fall down headlong.^[1] Now these structures or breastworks are called sides above,^[2] where, after the words and on the wall of the temple he built structures all around, running around the walls of the house, both the temple and the oracle, the following is immediately added: and he made side chambers all around. These side chambers, of course, we have understood as denoting the divine protection that helps us not to give up while still struggling in this world and daily striving after higher things according to our capacity. We ought to understand this passage also in the same sense, but with this distinction that in this life, whether amid the frequent temptations of our implacable enemy or the obstacles of our frailty, we are often, indeed constantly, protected by heavenly compassion, but in the life which, as we have stated above, the top of the roof of the temple suggests, we are protected by so great a grace of God who is with us, that we neither want nor are able to sin, nor are we affected by fear of either death or pain or the adversary who tempts us. The Lord speaks of the helps he gives us in the present life, as if they were the sides of the structures, when he says of his people, They will call on me, and I shall hear them; I am with them in their tribulation, and I shall rescue them and glorify them.^[3] Of his grace to come whereby that heavenly city is illumined, the prophet says to the same city, Praise the Lord, Jerusalem,^[4] and so forth as far as peace in your borders. Now this structure on the roof of the house of the Lord is rightly said to be five cubits high because, of course, the presence of God’s glory in that homeland [of ours] fills us in such a way that nothing else is sweet to our sight, our hearing, our sense of smell or taste or touch except to love the Lord our God with our whole heart, our whole soul, our whole mind, and to love our neighbor as ourselves.

On the inside, indeed, the house was lined with cedar, for on the outside, the actual stone it was built of glinted with as much brilliance as if it had been covered with glowing white marble. Taken in the mystical sense, however, the temple walls are the nations of believers of whom the holy universal church consists and whose widespread distribution throughout the whole world is denoted by the width of the walls, whereas the height denotes the hope and whole upward thrust of the church toward heavenly things, or at any rate the height of the wall, which consists of courses of stones laid one on top of the other, denotes the state of the present church where the elect are all built on the foundation of Christ and follow each other in succession through the course of the ages and, by supporting each other, fulfill the law of Christ,^[1] which is charity.

He calls the east side of the temple the rear; for the temple had its entrance on the east and its inner house, that is, the Holy of Holies, on the west. The fact that he says that the board partitions that separated the inner house from the outer one were erected from the floor to the top does not mean they were built to the ceiling, which was at the height of thirty cubits from the floor, as has already been said above,^[1] but only up to a height of twenty cubits, as one can clearly read in what follows. But the portion above these partitions up as far as the ceiling was left open and empty to a height of ten cubits and a length of twenty cubits across the width of the house, and, of course, through this aperture the smoke of the burnt offerings from the altar of sacrifice used to ascend and penetrate all the way in to cover the ark of the Lord. This division of the Lord’s house is a clear figure of a mystery and, thanks to the explanation of the apostle, is clearer than daylight because the first house into which the priests continually go performing their ritual duties^[2] is the present church, where, intent on works of piety, we daily offer sacrifices of praise to the Lord, but the inner house, which was built at the rear of the temple,^[3] is the promised life in heaven, which indeed precedes this life of our exile, which is celebrated there in the presence of the supreme king as a perpetual solemnity of the blessed, both angels and humankind. Hence it is with reference to it that the servant is quite deservedly told, Enter into the joy of your Lord^[4] but is later in time because it is after the labors of this world that we succeed in entering it.

We have said that the temple itself before the doors of the oracle was a type of the present church. Hence it was rightly forty cubits long, for this number is often used to signify the present labor of the faithful, just as the number fifty stands for the rest and peace to come. For the number ten contains the precepts, the observance of which leads to life. Likewise the number ten signifies that very eternal life that we desire and for which we live. But the world in which we strive to attain that life is a square. Hence too the psalmist, foreseeing the church that was to be assembled from the nations said, He has gathered them out of the countries from the rising and from the setting of the sun, from the north and from the sea.^[1] Now ten multiplied by four makes forty. Hence the people liberated from Egypt as a figure of the present church were subjected to many hardships for forty years in the desert,^[2] but at the same time they were also regaled with heavenly bread,^[3] and in this way they finally reached the land promised them of old. They were subjected to trials for forty years in order to draw attention to the hardships with which the church contends throughout the whole world in observing the law of God; they were fed on manna from heaven for those forty years to demonstrate that the very sufferings that the church endures in the hope of the heavenly denarius, that is, of eternal happiness, are to be alleviated when those who now hunger and thirst for righteousness will have their fill,^[4] and as the same church sings to its Redeemer, But as for me, I will appear before your sight in righteousness; I shall be satisfied when your glory shall appear.^[5] In the same way then the people of God is both subjected to adversities and regaled with manna to confirm the saying of the apostle: Rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation.^[6] In this figure too our Lord fasted forty days before his bodily death and feasted forty more with his disciples after his bodily resurrection appearing to them by many proofs and speaking of the kingdom of God, and eating together with them.^[7] For by fasting he showed in himself our toil, but by eating and drinking with his disciples he showed his consolation in our midst. While he was fasting he was crying out, as it were, Take heed lest perhaps your hearts be weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the cares of this life,^[8] whereas while he was eating and drinking he was crying out, as it were, Behold, I am with you all days even to the consummation of the world;^[9] and But I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no one shall take from you.^[10] For as soon as we set our feet on the way of the Lord we both fast from the vanity of the present world and are cheered with the promise of the world to come, not setting our heart on the life here below but feeding our heart on the life up there.

We have said of cedarwood that it betokened the unsurpassable beauty of the virtues. Now the entire house is covered inside with this wood when the hearts of the righteous begin to shine with nothing but the love of good works, and the house has its turnings made of cedar boards and its joints skillfully wrought when these elect are joined to each other by the most beautiful bond of charity so that, though the multitude of the faithful is innumerable, they can nevertheless, with good reason, be said to have one heart and one soul on account of the community of the faith and love they share.^[1] For the turnings that were attached to the joints of the planks in order that they might all make one partition are the very services of charity by which the holy brotherhood is bound together and formed into one house of Christ all over the world. Moreover, this house has carvings standing in relief when, far from covering and hiding their works of virtue, the saints, by a clear outward expression, show forth to all, as an example for living, what they themselves are like and what they do, as did the apostle Paul who not only by preaching Christ to the Gentiles and by personally suffering for Christ showed how outstanding he was, but also in his letters addressed to the churches declared how many perils he underwent for Christ and by what great revelations he was raised aloft in a blessed glorification.^[2] And when he said to his listeners without any hesitation, Be imitators of me, just as I am of Christ,^[3] what did he show them but the carvings standing in relief in the house of the Lord, which by the exceptional eminence of his virtue showed itself to be within the power of all to imitate?

The exposition of this has been anticipated to the effect, namely, that the secret inner house of our heavenly homeland designated the ark of the covenant, the Lord our Savior in whom alone we have a covenant of peace with the Father, [our Savior] who ascending into heaven after his resurrection placed at the right hand of his Father the flesh that he had taken from the Virgin.

And the altar he also covered with cedar. He means the altar of incense which was in front of the oracle [i.e., the inner sanctuary], about which a little further down are added the words also the whole altar, which belonged to the oracle, he covered with gold. From this we are given to understand that the same altar was indeed made of stone and overlaid with cedar and then covered with gold. It signifies typically the life of the perfectly righteous who are, as it were, placed near the oracle and giving up the basest pleasures concentrate all their attention merely on entering the kingdom of heaven. Hence quite appropriately it was not the flesh of victims that was burned on this altar but only incense, because such people no longer need to sacrifice in themselves carnal sins or seductive thoughts but only offer up the fragrance of spiritual prayers and heavenly desires through the fire of eternal love in the sight of their Creator. Now what the stone, cedar and gold represent in this kind of altar can be easily understood from what has been said above.

The gold leaf with which the house was covered is the manifold works of piety that pure love exhibits in the service either of its Creator or of a brother’s need. The gold nails^[1] with which the gold leaf was attached are the very precepts of charity or promises of eternal glory through which by the gift of the grace of Christ we are kept constant in the exercise and pursuit of virtue in case we should fail.

Cherubim, as the prophet Ezekiel explicitly declares, is a title of dignity, and in the singular number the form cherub is used, but cherubim in the plural. Hence the figures of the cherubim that were made in the oracle can be appropriately taken to mean the angelic retinues that always wait on their Creator in heaven. And they are properly said to have been made of olive wood because, of course, angelic virtues are anointed with the grace of the Holy Spirit lest they should ever grow arid in the love of God. For they are those fellow companions of ours of whom the prophet speaks in his praise of Christ: God your God has anointed you with the oil of gladness above your fellows.^[1] In figurative terms it was quite right that those whom their Creator later filled with the light of heavenly wisdom were made of olive wood. That is why he wanted them called cherub, which means in Latin a great store of knowledge. And they are ten cubits high because they enjoy the denarius of eternal life having preserved ever untarnished in themselves the image of their Creator by the sanctity and uprightness and truth that they received in the first creation. For a denarius is worth ten obols and customarily bore the name and likeness of the king. Consequently, it also makes a very fitting metaphor for the kingdom of heaven where, on the one hand, the holy angels ever remain in their Creator’s likeness according to which they were made, and on the other hand, the human elect receive his image that they had lost by sinning. For we know, he says, that when he appears we shall be like him [and] see him as he is.^[2]

Wings when used as a figure of holy people signify their virtues whereby they delight in always flying to heavenly things and passing their lives in preoccupation with these things. But when wings are used to signify angels, what do they more aptly demonstrate than the grace of perpetual and unfailing happiness of those who persevere continually in heavenly things in the service of their Creator? Or at all events because they are endowed with the lightness of spiritual nature so that they can get to wherever they want, as it were, by flying, they are here both figuratively represented with wings and actually shown with wings. Now it has been well said: One wing of the cherub was five cubits, and the other wing of the cherub five cubits, since the angelic powers keep with untiring devotion the law of God which is written in five books, that is, by loving the Lord their God with all their strength and by loving their neighbors as themselves.^[1] For love is the fulfilling of the law.^[2] Now their neighbors includes both the angelic spirits themselves reciprocally and elect human beings who are equally their fellow citizens. So the reason each wing is said to be of the same dimensions is that with the same devotion as they love each other in God they also long for our company as we ascend to them, and so two wings together take up ten cubits when, in a twofold demonstration of love, the angels rejoice in the presence of their Maker.

Two cherubim were made in order to signify a sharing in the same love of which we speak, because love cannot exist between fewer than two. Moreover, the reason why the Savior took care to send the disciples in twos^[1] to preach was that he might tacitly teach that those who were to preach the word of faith must before all works possess the virtue of love. And the two cherubim were of the same dimensions and shape because there is no difference of will or thought in the heavenly homeland where all are illumined by one and the same vision and glory of God present there.

From what has been said already it is clear why the cherubim, whose abode is always in heaven, were placed in the middle of the interior of the temple. The cherubim, moreover, stretch out their wings as if to fly because angelic spirits always have their mind in readiness to comply with the divine will. But the fact that one cherub’s wing was touching one wall and the second cherub’s wing the other wall has to do with that ministry of love that the angels perform for us. The fact that the other wings in the middle of the temple touched each other expresses that grace of love with which they embrace each other.

The two cherubim can also stand for the two Testaments. These cherubim, no doubt, were made in the oracle^[1] because in the design of God’s providence, which is, of course, inaccessible and incomprehensible to us, it was arranged before the world began, when and how and by what authors sacred Scripture was to be written. They were made of olive wood because the divine books were composed by men of mercy, whose godly deeds have not failed,^[2] men who were enlightened by the unction of the Holy Spirit. They were made of olive wood because they afford us the light of knowledge with the help of the flame of God’s love that is poured forth in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. They are ten cubits high because by the observance of the Decalogue of the law they preach that God is to be served since they show that those who serve God faithfully are to be rewarded with the denarius of an everlasting kingdom. They have twin sets of wings because they proclaim that the Testaments have always, both in adversity and prosperity, pursued heavenly things with tireless resolve and attained to them, because they point out to their listeners that they must do exactly the same. Five cubits is the length of one cherub’s wing and five the length of the other’s since in all the fluctuations of transient things the saints lay all the senses of their eyes ever on the Lord. They desire to hear the sound of his praise and to recount all his wonderful works, considering his words are sweeter to their throats than honey and the honeycomb to their mouths. Running after the odor of his ointments and while there is breath left in them and the spirit of God in their nostrils, they do not speak evil with their lips or utter folly with their tongue. Thus going on their way with the armor of righteousness on the right hand and on the left,^[3] they succeed in receiving the heavenly denarius that the supreme master of the household has promised to the workers in his vineyard.^[4]

And the two cherubim formed one work because the writers of both documents served God with one and the same purity of work and devotedness of love and proclaim God with one harmonious voice and belief. What the New Testament relates as accomplished facts regarding the Lord’s incarnation, passion, resurrection and ascension, the calling of the Gentiles, the expulsion of the Jews and the manifold affliction of the church, these same facts the Old Testament, rightly understood, truthfully foretold as events that were to happen.

Here it is indicated that there were four symbols of cherubim, palm trees, narcissus and lilies, which we said represent the saints praying in the temple and contemplating divine things. And these same saints were foreshadowed with a similar sense by Moses, even though he used different symbols, when he distributed the tribes of his people in four groups to the four regions of the world, so that they might all live around the tabernacle. Indeed, the tabernacle represented the person of God, whom he wanted them to contemplate and to observe constantly.^[1]

Solomon makes cherubim in the temple walls when the Lord grants to his elect to guide their lives according to the rule of the holy Scriptures, which contain a great store of knowledge. He makes cherubim when he teaches them to imitate in this world, according to their limited capacity, the chastity of the life of angels, and this is done particularly by vigils and the divine praises, by sincere love of the Creator and the neighbor. He makes palm trees when he fixes in their minds the thought of their eternal reward so that the more they have the reward of righteousness ever before the eyes of their hearts, the less likely are they to fall from the pinnacle of uprightness. He makes several representations, as it were, standing out in relief from the wall when he assigns to the faithful the manifold functions of the virtues, for instance, compassion, kindness, lowliness, patience and self-restraint, to show forbearance toward one another and forgive one another and above all these things to have love, which is the bond of perfection.^[1] That is to say, these virtues, when they become such a habit with the elect that they seem, as it were, to be naturally ingrained in them, what else are they than the pictures of the Lord’s house done in relief as if they were coming out of the wall, because they no longer learn the words and works of truth extrinsically from others but have them deeply rooted within themselves. Holding them in constant readiness, they can bring forth from their inmost hearts what ought to be done and taught.

Inside and outside^[1] mean in the oracle and in the temple itself. Now we have said above^[2] that the evenness of the floor denoted the humble harmony of the holy brotherhood where, though there are Jews and Gentiles, barbarians and Scythians, freeborn and slaves, highborn and lowborn,^[3] they all boast of being brothers in Christ, all boast of having the same Father who is in heaven, for no one may doubt the perfectly harmonious humility of the heavenly citizens. The reason why Solomon overlaid the floor of the house with gold inside and outside is that our king of peace^[4] has filled the angels and the souls of the righteous in heaven perfectly and fully with the gift of love and has set apart the citizens of the same heavenly homeland who are in pilgrimage in this world from the baseness of the rest of mortals by the hallmark of love, saying, By this shall all know that you are my disciples, if you have love one for another.^[5]

As regards the first part of his statement, namely, he made little doors of olive wood, he seems to have wanted to explain this more clearly when he added and two doors of olive wood.^[1] For there was one entrance to the oracle. But this entrance was closed by two doors and was opened again when they were unlocked, just as the temple and the portico before the temple no longer had an entrance. They give rise to a certain mystery because [since there is] one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God,^[2] we must hope for one entrance into the present church after baptism and one entrance into the heavenly kingdom through works of faith.

Now all these items, that is, cherubim and palm trees and carvings in the adornment of the temple walls, have been set forth and explained above^[1] according to our ability. There is no need to go to the trouble of adding anything further. For the works of virtue that the church performs throughout the world in its holy and perfect members should be pursued with all diligence by those especially to whom the care of the faithful has been committed and the keys of the kingdom of heaven granted, so that to the extent that they rank higher than the rest, they should also excel them in merit of good actions. For they have the image of the cherubim engraved on them when they imitate, both in thought and action, the life of angels on earth insofar as mortals can. They resemble palm trees when they keep their minds ever steadfastly intent on the gifts of their heavenly reward. For it is with the palm that the hand of a victor is adorned. They have carvings in bold relief when they show to all who observe them the clearest proofs of good works, proofs that no one can misconstrue. And all these works are covered with sheets of gold when, as has often been said and must always be said, the brightness of love outshines the rest of the flowers of virtue, especially in the eminent members of the church.

Just as the entrance to the inner sanctuary by which one reached the ark of the Lord and the cherubim signifies the entrance to the kingdom of heaven whereby we hope and desire to be introduced to the vision of our Creator and the heavenly citizens, so the entrance into the temple shows in type the beginnings of our life oriented on God when we enter the church of this present time. The latter entrance denotes our entry into the faith, the former our entry into vision. Hence the posts of this entrance were foursquare because of the four books of the holy gospel by whose teaching we are instructed in the true faith, or because of the four cardinal virtues of prudence, fortitude, temperance and justice, on whose most firm foundation, as it were, every edifice of good actions rests; prudence, by which we learn what we ought to do and how we ought to live; fortitude, through which we carry out what we have learned must be done; and the prophet briefly sums up these virtues in one verse, saying, The Lord is my light and my salvation;^[1] light, that is, to teach us the things we ought to do, salvation to strengthen us to do them; temperance by which we have discretion so as not to find ourselves giving more or less than the right amount of attention to prudence or fortitude; and since anyone who exercises prudence, fortitude and temperance will be proved beyond dispute to be just, the fourth virtue that follows after prudence, fortitude and temperance is justice.

[These symbols] have already been expounded above, because the same representations or carvings were wrought on the walls of the house and on the inner doors, and the meaning of the figures is obviously that the first door of the temple actually received the same representations and carvings and the same cherubim as the inner parts. The reason for this is that the same mysteries of faith, hope and charity, which the sublime and the perfect each grasp in a sublime manner and that all the elect in heaven fully understand in the divine vision, are handed on also in the instruction of the unlettered for each one to learn and confess, in as much as those who have been initiated into the mysteries sometimes also succeed in understanding what they have devoutly believed.

Hence it is aptly noted that the priests’ court was constructed of three courses of polished stones and one course of cedar beams. For the three courses of polished stones are faith, hope and charity, and the expression of polished stones is appropriate because each one needs a certain amount of intelligence to discern how he ought to believe and what he ought to hope for as well as love. But the one course of cedar beams is good works performed without being vitiated by outward show, since, if this condition is lacking, faith, hope and charity cannot be genuine. For it has often been said that on account of their pleasant fragrance and naturally incorruptible quality, cedar beams symbolize the enduring character and good repute of works of piety. All the elect who aim at pleasing God by faith, hope, love and action get as far as this court. Beyond it climb the perfect by the exalted grace of their merits since they reach such a peak of virtue that they can say to their hearers, Be imitators of us as we also are of Christ,^[1] and boast and say, Do you not know that we shall judge the angels? How much more the things of this world?^[2]

The allegorical meaning of the fact that the house of the Lord was built in seven years is plain, because, of course, the holy church is being built of the souls of the elect for the entire duration of this world, which is also completed in a period of six days, and it too brings its growth to an end with the end of the world. Or, at all events, it is built in seven years on account of the import of the grace of the Spirit through which the church alone gets the authority to be the church. For Isaiah enumerates the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit without which no one can either become a believer or keep the faith or by the merit of faith attain the crown.^[1] On the other hand, the fact that it was in the eighth year and in the eighth month of that year that the house was completed in all its parts and all its specifications has to do with the world to come and the day of judgment when the holy church will already have reached such a degree of perfection that it will not be possible to find anything to add to it. For it will then have what that dutiful devotee suppliantly asked of the Lord, saying, Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.^[2] For it is well known that the day of judgment is often represented typologically in the Scriptures by the number eight from the fact that it follows this world, which lasts for seven days. This is also why the prophet gave the title For the eighth to the psalm he used to sing through fear of this severe judge, beginning with the words Lord, rebuke me not in your indignation, nor chastise me in your wrath,^[3] and so forth.

But there arises the rather important question as to how the house of the Lord is said to have been completed in all its parts in the eighth month and in all its specifications, whereas in what follows one reads that its dedication was completed in the seventh month.^[4] On the other hand, it is not credible that Solomon, though he built the temple in seven years and completed it in the eighth month of the eighth year, nevertheless deferred the dedication of the completed building until the seventh month of the ninth year. Hence it seems more likely that the house was built in seven years and seven months so that the solemn ceremony of dedication might be celebrated in the same seventh month, and, as the Chronicles relate,^[5] on the twenty-third day of that month Solomon sent the people away to their tents, and thus after one week when the eighth month had come around, the house of the Lord was found to be complete and already finished, that is to say, both in all its parts and in its actual dedication. Unless perhaps one should think that after the dedication of the temple some extra features were added for its services up to the beginning of the eighth month, the king speeding up the work so that the temple would be dedicated in the seventh month, . . . and that in this way the two things might turn out to be true, namely, both that the temple had been completed in the eighth month in all its parts and specifications and that it had been dedicated in the seventh month.