The workmen, headed by Bezalel and Oholiab (Exodus 31:1-11), had a lot of work to do making the large box, the Ark of the Covenant (25:10-16) and its cover (25:17-22), the table for the bread of the Presence (25:23-30), the Lampstand (25:31-40), the Altar (27:1-8), and the Tabernacle itself (26:1-37) to enclose all these furnishings. The instructions for making all these items are quite detailed.

We will focus today on just one of these, the “cover” of the box that held the covenant. The Hebrew word for the box’s cover is kapporeth. It is a very heavy slab of gold: estimating a cubit (the distance from your elbow to your longest fingertip) at 18 inches, and making the kapporeth half an inch thick, it would weight about 420 pounds. Add in the weight of the two angelic statuettes made of gold, formed at each end of the kapporeth, and the total weight of the lid would be close to 500 pounds. There are two important theological statements about the kapporeth: (1) it is the place where God meets us (25:22, 30:6; Leviticus 16:2), and (2) it is the place where atonement is made for our sins (Leviticus 16:14-16).

The second-century-BC Greek version of the Hebrew Bible renders the word kapporeth as hilasterion. And in the first century AD we find Paul the Apostle saying that God has established Jesus as the hilasterion (Romans 3:25). By using this word Paul assumes (quite optimistically) that his readers will get the reference to the cover of the Ark of the Covenant, and will see that it means that God has now established Jesus as the place where our sins are atoned for, and the place where we meet with God.

In the Lutherbibel (1534), a translation of the Bible into German by Martin Luther and several others, they used the term Gnadenstuhl (‘mercy chair’) to translate kapporeth. This term apparently came from interpreting the line “The Lord of Hosts, who dwells upon the cherubim” (I Samuel 4:4) to indicate that the cover served as the throne of God; therefore the kapporeth was a seat; since it was the place where God’s mercy was revealed, it should be called the ‘mercy seat.’ Early English translations, including the King James Version (1611), followed the lead of the Lutherbibel and rendered the term as ‘mercy seat.’ In my estimation, creating the term ‘mercy seat’ does not help. The term kapporeth and its Greek translation hilasterion have already made this a challenging topic for the English-speaking reader; adding an additional obscure English phrase gives us three terms to sort out, instead of two.

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Ah, Lord Jesus! You are the hilasterion! You are where the atonement took place, and you are where we meet with God! We pray that we may receive your forgiveness, and that we may dwell with you in the presence of the Father, now and always.

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