House

A house in Scripture is at once a building of stone, brick, and timber, the family that dwells in it, the dynastic line carried by its name, and a figure for the body, the assembly, and Yahweh's own dwelling. The Mosaic law regulates how a house is built, dedicated, kept clean, and entered; the historical books trace the rise and fall of "the house of Yahweh" at Gibeon, in Jerusalem, and after the exile; the prophets and the apostles widen the term until it covers Wisdom's seven-pillared hall, the body that decays like a tabernacle, and a holy temple of living stones grown together in the Spirit.

Materials and Architecture

Houses are built of stone, brick, and wood. At Babel the builders agree, "Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and they had slime for mortar" (Gen 11:3). Under the Mosaic law a house infected with "fretting leprosy" is treated as a wall of stones, timber, and mortar: the priest commands that the contaminated stones be carried "into an unclean place outside the city," the inside walls scraped and replastered, and if the plague returns the whole structure is broken down and removed (Lev 14:40-45). Solomon's temple itself is laid on cut stone foundations and shows that the same vocabulary of stones and mortar reaches from the village dwelling to the house of Yahweh.

A house is built into the city wall (Josh 2:15, where Rahab hides the spies) and roofed flat. Its rooftop is a working space: Joshua's spies are hidden under stalks of flax laid out on Rahab's roof (Josh 2:6); Samuel takes Saul aside on the housetop for private speech (1 Sam 9:25); the four men carrying the paralytic, blocked by the crowd, "went up to the housetop, and let him down through the tiles with his couch into the middle [of everyone] before Jesus" (Luke 5:19); and at the rebuilt Jerusalem the people make booths "every one on the roof of his house, and in their courts, and in the courts of the house of God, and in the broad place of the water gate" (Neh 8:16). The same flat roof gives Proverbs its stock contrast: "It is better to dwell in the corner of the housetop, Than with a contentious woman in a wide house" (Prov 21:9).

The Sanctity of a Dwelling

Israel's law fences the house as a sphere of its own. A creditor may not invade it for collateral: "When you lend your fellow man any manner of loan, you will not go into his house to fetch his pledge. You will stand outside, and the man to whom you lend will bring forth the pledge outside to you" (Deut 24:10-11). Devotion is fixed to the house's threshold — "you will write them on the door-posts of your house, and on your gates" (Deut 6:9) — so the literal frame of the dwelling becomes the carrier of Yahweh's words. A newly built house is dedicated before its owner is liable for war: "What man is there that has built a new house, and has not dedicated it? Let him go and return to his house, or else if he dies in the battle, another will man dedicate it" (Deut 20:5).

Without a House

Against this settled life the Scriptures register the figure of those who have no house. Job describes the dispossessed who "are wet with the showers of the mountains, And embrace the rock for want of a shelter" (Job 24:8); Lamentations recalls Jerusalem's fall in the same key: "Those who did feed delicately are desolate in the streets: Those who were brought up in scarlet embrace dunghills" (Lam 4:5). Paul ranks homelessness among the apostolic afflictions — "we both hunger, and thirst, and are naked, and are buffeted, and have no certain dwelling-place" (1 Cor 4:11) — and Jesus puts it as a saying about himself: "The foxes have holes, and the birds of the heaven [have] nests; but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head" (Luke 9:58). Sirach, treating the same theme from a wisdom register, warns that suretyship "has driven [wealthy men] from their homes, And they wandered among strange nations" (Sir 29:18) and observes that "without a wife [a man is] a wanderer and homeless" (Sir 36:25).

The House of Yahweh — Tabernacle

Yahweh's dwelling among Israel begins as a portable house. "Let them make me a sanctuary, that I may stay among them" (Exod 25:8), and Israel makes the tabernacle "with ten curtains; of fine twined linen, and blue, and purple, and scarlet, with cherubim the work of the skillful workman" (Exod 26:1). When the work is done, "the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of Yahweh filled the tabernacle" (Exod 40:34). The structure is anointed (Lev 8:10) and is the place where atonement is made for "the uncleannesses of the sons of Israel" (Lev 16:16). The Levites alone may strike, carry, and pitch it: "when the tabernacle sets forward, the Levites will take it down; and when the tabernacle is to be pitched, the Levites will set it up: and the stranger who comes near will be put to death" (Num 1:51). At Shiloh the congregation pitches it permanently for a season (Josh 18:1); Moses' tabernacle survives at the high place at Gibeon down into David's reign (1 Chr 21:29; 2 Chr 1:3) and is finally brought up to Jerusalem with the ark (1 Kgs 8:4; 2 Chr 5:5). Sirach personifies Wisdom as ministering "in the holy tabernacle" (Sir 24:10) and as filling the air "as the smoke of incense in the Tabernacle" (Sir 24:15).

The plan of the house is not improvised. Moses is commanded, "see that you make them after their pattern, which has been shown to you in the mount" (Exod 25:40); the lampstand is hammered out "according to the pattern which Yahweh had shown Moses" (Num 8:4); the tabernacle frames are reared "according to the fashion of it which has been shown to you" (Exod 26:30) and the altar made hollow with planks "as it has been shown to you in the mount, so they will make it" (Exod 27:8). David, transmitting the pattern of the temple to Solomon, says, "All this, [said David], I have been made to understand in writing from the hand of Yahweh, even all the works of this pattern" (1 Chr 28:19), having received "the pattern of all that he had by the Spirit, for the courts of the house of Yahweh, and for all the chambers round about" (1 Chr 28:12). Hebrews reads the priests of the tabernacle as those "who serve [that which is] a copy and shadow of the heavenly things, even as Moses is warned [of God] when he is about to make the tabernacle: for, See, he says, that you make all things according to the pattern that was shown to you in the mount" (Heb 8:5).

The House of Yahweh — Temple

The settled house succeeds the tent. The promise to David fixes the term: "He will build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever" (2 Sam 7:13). Solomon takes up the charge — "I purpose to build a house for the name of Yahweh my God, as Yahweh spoke to David my father" (1 Kgs 5:5) — and in the four hundred and eightieth year after the exodus, in the fourth year of his reign, "he began to build the house of Yahweh" (1 Kgs 6:1). On dedication day Solomon prays, "I have surely built you a house of habitation, a place for you to dwell in forever" (1 Kgs 8:13). Sirach later remembers that "Solomon reigned in days of peace, And God gave him rest round about. He prepared a house for his name, And established a sanctuary forever" (Sir 47:13).

Repair is part of the house's history. Joash directs "every man from his acquaintance" to fund repair of "the breaches of the house" (2 Kgs 12:5); Josiah's officials pay "the workmen who have the oversight of the house of Yahweh" (2 Kgs 22:5). The end is also part of its history. Nebuchadnezzar's commander "burned the house of Yahweh, and the king's house; and all the houses of Jerusalem, even every great house, he burned with fire" (2 Kgs 25:9; cf. 2 Chr 36:19), profaning "the dwelling-place of your name [by casting it] to the ground" (Ps 74:7). Isaiah's lament is exact: "Our holy and our beautiful house, where our fathers praised you, has burned with fire; and all our pleasant places are laid waste" (Isa 64:11). Micah forecast it: "Zion for your⁺ sake [will] be plowed as a field, and Jerusalem will become heaps, and the mountain of the house as the high places of a forest" (Mic 3:12).

The second house is built by returnees. The "heads of fathers' [houses], when they came to the house of Yahweh which is in Jerusalem, offered willingly for the house of God to set it up in its place" (Ezra 2:68); the adversaries of Judah hear "that the sons of the captivity were building a temple to Yahweh" (Ezra 4:1); Darius decrees expenses for the work (Ezra 6:8); and "the elders of the Jews built and prospered, through the prophesying of Haggai the prophet and Zechariah the son of Iddo" (Ezra 6:14). Haggai still has to rebuke the delay: "This people say, It is not the time [for us] to come, the time for Yahweh's house to be built" (Hag 1:2). Sirach commemorates "Joshua, the son of Jehozadak, Who in their days built the House, And set up on high the Holy Temple, Which was prepared for everlasting glory" (Sir 49:12), and Simeon son of Jochanan, "in whose generation the house was renovated" (Sir 50:1). 1 Maccabees records the same house in crisis: the priests stand "before the face of the altar and the temple" weeping (1 Ma 7:36), pleading, "You, O Lord, have chosen this house for your name to be called on in it, that it might be a house of prayer and supplication for your people" (1 Ma 7:37); Alcimus tries "to throw down" the inner court (1 Ma 9:54); refugees flee to "the temple that is in Jerusalem" for asylum (1 Ma 10:43); the kingdom hopes to glorify "the temple, with great glory" (1 Ma 15:9). The same book registers houses-of-other-gods that share the term — Carnaim's temple burned (1 Ma 5:44), the rich shrine in the East with its plates of gold (1 Ma 6:2), the temple of Dagon at Azotus burned by Jonathan (1 Ma 10:84).

Herod's reconstructed house is the one that frames the gospels' temple scenes. "Forty and six years was this temple in building, and will you raise it up in three days?" (John 2:20); some "spoke of the temple, how it was adorned with goodly stones and offerings" (Luke 21:5); Jesus enters the temple and casts out those who sold and bought (Mark 11:15), grounding the act in the prophets' word: "Is it not written, My house will be called a house of prayer for all the nations? But you⁺ have made it a den of robbers" (Mark 11:17). The Psalter reads this house both ways at once — as physical destination and as object of worship: "in the abundance of your loving-kindness I will come into your house: In your fear I will worship toward your holy temple" (Ps 5:7); "I will worship toward your holy temple, And give thanks to your name for your loving-kindness and for your truth: For you have magnified your [Speech] above all your name" (Ps 138:2); and as the place whose holiness is the law of its plan: "This is the law of the house: on the top of the mountain the whole limit of it round about will be most holy. Look, this is the law of the house" (Ezek 43:12). Sirach prays, "Fill Zion with your majesty, And your temple with your glory" (Sir 36:14).

My House — The Davidic Line

"House" carries a second sense in the same texts. When the prophet Nathan brings the dynastic promise, David sits before Yahweh and answers in those terms: "Who am I, O Sovereign Yahweh, and what is my house, that you have brought me thus far?" (2 Sam 7:18). The "house" Yahweh promises to build for David is not a building but a line of sons; and the "house" David asks after is his lineage as Yahweh sees it. The promise that Solomon's son will build the literal house for Yahweh's name and that Yahweh will establish that throne forever (2 Sam 7:13) couples the two senses — Solomon's stone house and David's family house — in one sentence.

The Body and the Heavenly House

Paul reads the body as the house's near analogue. "If the earthly house of our tabernacle is dissolved, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal, in the heavens" (2 Cor 5:1). Jesus uses the same figure for the place to which he is going: "In my Father's house are many places to stay; if it were not so, would I tell you⁺ that I go to prepare a place for you⁺?" (John 14:2). Hebrews gathers the line: Christ has come "through the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this creation" (Heb 9:11). The Psalmist's "I will dwell in the house of Yahweh forever" (Ps 23:6) is read in this register, of a habitation that outlasts the earthly tent.

Wisdom too is given a house. "Wisdom has built her house; She has cut out her seven pillars" (Prov 9:1) — a figurative dwelling whose architecture is teaching, not stone.

The Spiritual House

The apostles fold all of these senses into one figure for the believing community. The body is a temple: "Don't you⁺ know that you⁺ are a temple of God, and [that] the Spirit of God dwells in you⁺?" (1 Cor 3:16); "your⁺ body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you⁺, whom you⁺ have from God; and you⁺ are not your⁺ own" (1 Cor 6:19). The community is a temple: "we are a temple of the living God; even as God said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they will be my people" (2 Cor 6:16). The community is a temple's holiness: "If any man destroys the temple of God, him will God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, and such are you⁺" (1 Cor 3:17). The community is a house — the "house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth" (1 Tim 3:15) — and Christ stands over it as Moses stood within his: "[Moses] who was faithful to him who appointed him, as also was Moses in all his house" (Heb 3:2); "but Christ as a son, over his house; whose house we are, if we hold fast our boldness and the glorying of our hope" (Heb 3:6).

The figure becomes architectural. "[You⁺ are] being built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the chief corner stone; in whom each building, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you⁺ also are built together into a dwelling place of God in the Spirit" (Eph 2:20-22). Peter pictures the same construction with living material: "you⁺ also, as living stones, are built up a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God through Jesus Christ" (1 Pet 2:5). The indwelling that completes the figure runs through Paul and John alike — "that Christ may dwell in your⁺ hearts through faith" (Eph 3:17), "Christ in you⁺, the hope of glory" (Col 1:27), "Christ lives in me" (Gal 2:20), "if Christ is in you⁺, the body is dead because of sin; but the spirit is life because of righteousness" (Rom 8:10), "I in them, and you in me" (John 17:23), "I am in my Father, and you⁺ in me, and I in you⁺" (John 14:20), "by the Spirit whom he gave us" he stays in us (1 John 3:24), and "I stand at the door and knock: if any man hears my voice and opens the door, then I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me" (Rev 3:20).

The arc is the umbrella's: the house of stone and timber regulated by Mosaic law gives place to the tabernacle made by pattern, the tabernacle to the temple Solomon builds and the second temple the returnees finish, the temple to the body and the assembly, the assembly to the Father's house with its many places to stay.