NOTES for Ki1 9:3
In ancient times, temples were regarded as the dwellings of the gods in the literal sense of the word. Pagan gods lived in their temples just as people lived in their houses. There was nothing strange about this, for pagan gods were neither omnipresent nor almighty, although all of them were of course stronger than human beings and differed from them, among other things, in being immortal. Yet, like human beings, they could not resist fate, the blind and impersonal force that directed everyone and everything. It is no accident that Paul calls the pagan gods “daimons,” created spirits, in one of his epistles. Limited in time and space, they could indeed have had a permanent dwelling place on earth, like human beings, if they had wished. But how could the God of Israel, who created heaven and earth, dwell anywhere on earth? If His presence on earth, in any temple, were meant in the same sense in which pagan gods were said to dwell in their temples, the very idea of such a presence would be absurd. Yet God is evidently speaking to Solomon about something else. He speaks of the presence of His name in the Temple Solomon built. Communion with God and the liturgical practice of the Temple were associated with sacred names and the practice of invoking them; no sacrifice was possible without such an invocation. God responded to the human call by sanctifying the Temple with His presence. This did not, of course, mean that the fullness of God was contained within the Temple. But the divine will, the focus of His attention—what God means when He speaks of His “eyes and heart”—established between Him and the people who turned to Him an invisible yet wholly real bond. This bond changed those people just as truly as it changed everything that came within its reach. Then, in a completely incomprehensible way, God and human beings really did meet face to face in the Temple. God was present there not symbolically or allegorically, but absolutely and truly. He was present for the sake of those people whom He loved, a love that ultimately made possible both the birth of the Messiah and the coming of the Kingdom. In the pre-Christian period, the sacred space of the Tabernacle and the Temple—the place sanctified by God where He met His faithful—was a foreshadowing of that Kingdom.