lechem-panim

The Bread and the Light

Exodus Exodus 25:23-40

Exodus 25 began at the dead center of the sanctuary — the ark and the mercy seat, where God meets Israel once a year. It now moves one room outward, into the Holy Place, and commands the two furnishings that stand there day and night: the table bearing the bread of the Presence and the golden lampstand. Both are governed by a single word — tamid, 'continually.' The bread is the bread 'of the face,' set before the face of YHWH always; the lampstand is hammered from one mass of gold, its cups shaped like almond blossoms, the tree of the watching God. The continual presence commanded here can be looted and restored — Antiochus took both, the Maccabees brought them back — and it points past itself to the city that needs no lamp, where the Lamb is the light and no bread is renewed because the source is direct.