Shekinah

SHEKINAH. Nothing is more frequent שכינה Shekinah.in the Writings of the Jews, than the Shekinah, by which they understand the Presence of the Holy Spirit. In the Targums, or Chaldee Paraphrases, we find the Names Jehovah, or God; Memar, or the Word; and Shekinah, or the Holy Ghost.¹ They suppose the Holy Spirit, as speaking and communicating itself to Men by Revelation, first, in the Prophets; secondly, in the Urim and Thummim, which were in the Highpriest’s Breast-plate; and thirdly, the Shekinah resides in what the Hebrews call Bath-col, or the Daughter of the Voice. The Shekinah was given them only since the Ruin of the first Temple, and when Prophecy and the Oracle of Urim was taken away from them. The Bath-col is Tradition, which supplies the Place of Revelation, and explains the Law. The Shekinah is the Presence of the Holy Ghost, which resided in the Temple of Jerusalem, and which, as the Rabbins say, drove away from thence the Princes of the Air, and communicated a particular Sanctity to it.

They say also, that it rests upon the Mild and the Humble, but that it flies from the fierce and passionate Man. It resides with him, whose House is open to the Stranger, and is found in the midst of two or three Persons that meet to study the Echa Rab. fol. 59. 1.Law. Lastly, they say, that the Shekinah has ten times changed its Dwelling; and lastly, going upon the Mount of Olives, it continued there three Years and an half, crying out to the Israelites; Return to me, my Children, and I will return to you. But seeing they would not be converted, it retired to its own Place. This last Circumstance seems to denote our Saviour’s Preaching among the Jews, and his Ascension that happen’d to be from the Mount of Olives.

The Shekinah was the most sensible Mark of the Presence of God, which was to be observed among the Hebrews, and which rested over the Propitiatory, or over the golden Cherubims, which adhered to the Propitiatory, or the Covering of the Ark. There the Shekinah abode in the Shape of a Cloud. ‘Twas from thence that God gave forth his Oracles with an articulate Voice, when he was consulted by the Highpriest in Favour of his People. Thence it is that it is often said in Scripture, that God sits upon the Cherubims, or between the Cherubims; that is to say, that he gives the most evident Tokens of his divine Presence, by answering from hence the Israelites that consulted him. The Rabbins tell us, that the Shekinah first resided in the Tabernacle prepared by Moses in the Wilderness, and that it descended therein on the Day of its Consecration in the Figure of a Cloud. It passed from thence into the Sanctuary of Solomon’s Temple, on the Day of its Dedication by this Prince; where it continu’d to the Destruction of Jerusalem and of the Temple by the Chaldeans, and was not afterwards to be seen there.

See in the Article SAMUEL, what we have related from the Orientals concerning the Shekinah.

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