Jehosheba - Their Life And Times

Jehosheba - Their Life And Times

THE TEMPLE

Smart Jehosheba! She hid little Joash away in the place Baal-worshiping Athaliah was least likely to stumble on him: in the temple of the Lord. Though at times the people of Israel misused the temple to worship idols, it remained primarily a place for worship of the true God.

King David had been the one to begin making plans for a great temple to replace the tabernacle as a place for worship. The tabernacle was not a permanent building, and David thought it only fitting that God should have as magnificent a house as his own (2 Samuel 7:2). David gathered great stores of stone and iron and bronze and “more cedar logs than could be counted” (1 Chronicles 22:4) in preparation for building the temple. He also obtained “a hundred thousand talents of gold, a million talents of silver.” Believe it or not, that’s about 3,750 tons of gold and an astonishing 37,500 tons of silver!

David’s son Solomon actually built the temple in Jerusalem. The building began during the fourth year of his reign (966 BC) and wasn’t completed until the eleventh year. The structure was built of stone cut and dressed at quarries and transported to the temple site. The stone was then covered with cedar wood, carved with cherubim and palm trees and flowers, then covered with gold. A reading of 1 Kings 5 – 8 gives a marvelous picture of the lavish structure Solomon dedicated to the Lord.

Jehosheba and her husband, the high priest, hid the heir to the throne in that same structure. The temple now housed not only the presence of the true God, but also the ancestor of God’s Son, Jesus the Messiah. Through the brave actions of one woman, the lineage of David was protected and our salvation through the Messiah was assured.