The Temple Ministry and Services at the Time of Jesus

THE NAME JERUSALEM 25
has made for its course, one object rose up straight
before him. It was Moriak, the mount on which the
sacrifice of Isaac was to be offered. Here Solomon
afterwards built the Temple. For over Mount Moriah
David had seen the hand of the destroying angel
stayed, probably just above where afterwards from
the large altar of burnt-offering the smoke of count
less sacrifices rose day by day. On the opposite hill
of Zion, separated only by a ravine from Moriah,
stood the city and the palace of David, and close by
the site of the Temple the tower of David. After
that period an ever-shifting historical panorama
passes before our view, unchanged only in this, that,
amidst all the varying events, Jerusalem remains
the one centre of interest and attraction, till we come
to that Presence which has made it, even in its
desolateness, Hephzibah/ sought out/ a city not
l
forsaken.
The Rabbis have a curious conceit about the origin
of the name Jerusalem, which is
taken to
commonly
mean, the foundation/ the abode/ or the inherit
1
ance of peace.
They make it a com
pound of Jireh and Skalem, and say
that Abraham called it
Jehovah-Jireh/
while Shem had named it
Shalem, but that God
combined the two into Jireh-Shalem, Jerushalaim, or
Jerusalem. 2 There was certainly something peculiar
in the choice of Palestine to be the country of the
chosen people, as well as of Jerusalem to be its
capital. The political importance of the land must
be judged from its situation rather than its size.
Lying midway between the east and the west, and
placed between the great military monarchies,
1
Isaiah Ixii. 4.
*
er. R.
first of