42 A History of Judaism
most often in the writings of the earlier prophets, Amos, Hosea, Micah,
Jeremiah and Isaiah. Many of their comments concern issues of moral
priorities: as Micah complains, what is the point of burnt- offerings if
you do not do what the Lord requires, ‘to do justice, and to love kind-
ness, and to walk humbly with your God’? Other prophetic passages
complain bitterly about incorrect forms of sacrifice – ‘When you offer
blind animals in sacrifice, is that not wrong? And when you offer those
that are lame and sick, is that not wrong?’ – or sacrifices to divinities
other than the God of Israel: ‘Do not rejoice, O Israel! ... for you have
played the whore, departing from your God.’ Jeremiah reports the
wrath of the Lord because the people ‘make cakes for the queen of
heaven; and they pour out drink- offerings to other gods’, recording the
divine rebuff that burnt- offerings are useless because ‘on the day that I
brought your ancestors out of the land of Egypt, I did not speak to them
or command them concerning burnt- offerings and sacrifices. But this
command I gave them, “Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and
you shall be my people.” ’
Some of these critiques of sacrifice may have been issued by prophets
from within the Temple itself, but their critiques were preserved in a
biblical corpus in which the Temple and its importance is frequently
stressed throughout. Even the apparently clear rejection of sacrifice in
Psalm 50 – ‘I will not accept a bull from your house, or goats from your
folds ... If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world and all that
is in it is mine. Do I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats?’ –
is prefaced by calling for a gathering of ‘my faithful ones, who made a
covenant with me by sacrifice’, so that this polemic too seems most
likely to be aimed at those who fail to ‘offer to God a sacrifice of thanks-
giving’ (as prescribed in Leviticus) and to pay their vows, again with a
sacrifice, to the Most High.^6
According to the biblical account, the Temple of Solomon was a rect-
angle, 100 cubits (roughly 55 yards) long and 50 cubits (27 yards) wide,
erected on a platform. The inner space was divided into three sections.
An open doorway from the surrounding courtyard led into a porch,
with two great bronze pillars, called ‘Jakhin’ and ‘Boaz’, on either side
of the entrance. This porch led through double doors into a large room
which was the locus of most of the rituals. A further set of doors, made
of olive wood, led into the inner sanctuary, which was a cube in shape
(20 cubits to each side). The floors of the central and inner rooms were
set with cypress boards and the cedar wood walls were carved with
floral and other images. Ritual objects in the central chamber included