The Temple Functioning as the Jewish Neck

Both Temples of ancient Israel were God's design to be among His people. It began with Moses and God's instructions to him to construct the Tabernacle that the Israelites would carry with them through their wilderness journey to the Promised Land. God's Holy Spirit would stretch from Heaven to the Holy of Holies and all the people would come out of their tents and bow and worship and God would be among His people. How powerful is the image of the Holy, amazing God who came near to His people. Whose God is like this, right? The Jews have a name for the Temple that we might not be familiar with. The Temple is known to them as functioning like the Neck.

Song of Songs 7-5 says, Your neck is like an ivory tower.

The Jews also believed that when Joseph saw his brother Benjamin he ran and fell on his neck and began to weep. Benjamin also began to weep. When this moment ocurred, as believed by Jews, Beresheit, Parsh Vayigash 45:14 (book of Genesis - weekly Torah reading), God showed them both the temples that would come. It is thought that because of the ecstasy they both experienced from seeing the future temples God also showed them the destruction of those temples and the loss of life the Jewish people would suffer so they both wept on each others necks. This kept them from dying from too much ecstasy. They were weeping for their future.

This scene is believed to be an allusion to the temples and their function similar to that of the Neck. The metaphor of the neck is significant in a couple of ways. First, while the temple was in existence it allowed the Jews to walk among the nations with their heads up and necks erect. But at their destruction they became degraded and walked in shame at the loss of the temple. Secondly, the neck is our life line. We can live, as stated by Rena Cohen in a paper written about the Temple Mount, without limbs, but not without the neck. If our necks are severed then we cease to live. Thus the Temple was the life line to the Jews because of God's visible presence among them.

Just as outlined in the book of Hebrews in the New Testament, we have a Great High Priest, that is Jesus, who is ever before the Father interceding for us in the Most Holy Place in Heaven. The earthly temple was but a shadow of the things which were to come. And, now we live the fulfilled plan of God in that we have received Christ, our Lord, and the Spirit of God now dwells in man! Christ functions like our Necks! He ever intercedes on our behalf and His blood shed makes for the pure and eternal atonement mankind so desperately needs. The blood of bulls and lambs were not all sufficient but the sacrifice of the Son of the Most High is now our life line. He is our neck! I praise God for this life line, our Christ, and now we have a new and better covenant. Jesus is the Neck and life line to humanity. He is the Way, the Truth and the Life no man can come unto the Father but by Him.