esh-tamid

The Bronze Altar

Exodus Exodus 27:1-8

Exodus 26 built the dwelling and drove inward to the veil; Exodus 27 turns and walks out into the courtyard, and the first object the worshiper meets is an altar. The mizbeach is, by its own root, the place of slaughter — the most widely attested cultic noun in the Hebrew Bible — and the Septuagint renders it thysiastērion, the word every New Testament altar-verse inherits. Its four horns are 'from it,' of one piece with the altar, the point where atoning blood is applied and the fugitive grasps for refuge. Its metal is bronze, the metal of the outer court, the same metal as the serpent lifted on a pole. And its fire never went out — esh tamid, the perpetual fire — because the work was never finished, until the single sacrifice offered 'for all time' made the fire's repetition obsolete.