If a rigorous conception of God's ubiquity for- bade His dwelling in a place, so also must it pre- clude His removal from a place. When Hos 5* says, ' J" has withdrawn himself from them,' Targ. reads 'J" has removed his Shekinah from them.' This phrase is also used of God's 'hiding his face' (Is 8" 57" 59-, Jer 33'), and 'hiding his eyes' (Is l"). The words 'Thou art a God that hidest thyself' (Is 45'°) are rendered, 'Thou hast
SHEKIXAII
SHEKINAH
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placed thy Shekinah in the lofty fastness.' Cf. Hab 3*.
It was the belief of the Jews that the glory of the Loud did not dwell in the Most Holy Place in the second Tein|ile. The Talmud ( Ymna 9/t) explains this on the ground that (!od only dwells in the tents of Sheni ; not of Japheth, of whom Cyrus was a descendant. This was deplored, and the promises of more intimate fellowship to be enjoyed by tlie Church in the Messianic age are in the I'arg. all n\.i<lo lo predict the presence of the Shekinah (Jl 3(4)" 'I will place my Shekinah in Zion ' ; so Ezk 43'- », Hag 1» 2", Zee 2'").
It would be difficult among all these passages from the Targura to point to one in which activity or personality is assigned to the Sliekinah. Under the conception that ' Uod is Li^ht,' the Skekinah is God's mere ' manifestation-form.' Wlieu we pass, however, from the Targ. to the Midrash and ralmud, the Shekinah ceases to be inactive, and has functions a-ssigned to it wliich belong rather to the Logos or the Spirit. Lv 26'= 'I will walk among you, and be your God,' becomes in Targ. * I will place the glory of my .Shekinah among you, and my Mcinra (word) shall be with j-ou.' lit 12' Targ. Jerus. ' Tlie place whicli the Memra of J" shall choose to place his Shekinah there'; but in Midr. and Talm. the Mcinra almost dis- appears, and His functions are assigned to the Shekinah. We tind in Pesacliim 73 that it was the Shekinah which spoke to Amos and the pro-
£hets; and the expression inV niDio ('a P.salm of lavid') means that the Shekinah came down upon David, and he then spake forth the Psalm (Pes. 114). The Shekinah is, in the Talmud, regularly the source of inspiration. The reason wliy Eli mistook Hannah's grief for inebriety was that the Shekinah had departed from him. The Mishna was given through Moses under the auspices of the Sliekinah. Pir/fe Aboth iii. 3 u.ses Shekinah in the Christian sense of the word Spirit : ' When- ever two men sit together and are occupied with words of the Torah, the Shekinah is with them.' In the Talmud (IScniklioth Ga) the number is raised to 'ten.' The Shekinah is always picseut in 8}-nagogues, in schools, and in the homes of the pious (Suta \'n). ' He that eats with the Wise enjoys the Shekinah ' (Weber, 182 [- 188]).
We have s en that it was usually taught that the Shekinah was not visible in the second Temple. Yomn 1 mentions the Sliekinah in a list of things absent from it. But others teach that the She- kinah is inseparable from Israel. When Israel was in Babylon the Shekinah was there. The Shekinah was under the yoke, when Israel so suHered. Wherever Israel is scattered, the She- kinah dwells. When Titus destroyed the Temple, the Shekinah could not desert it, and it is still there behind the remaining western wall (Weber, 60[»ti2J).
The activity of the Shekinah was conceived to extend not onlj' to earth, but to .Sheol. There were some of the Kabhis who held the doctrine now known as Miual restoration.' K. Joshua ben Levi was one of thcx;. He believed that the bound in Gehinnom will one day see the Messiah, and all who bear the mark of the covenant will loose their chains and ascend from the darkness. Hut in liercshilh I}(ihbn to Gn 44' the Shekinah is the deliverer. It alliinis that the wicked Jews now ' bound in (iehiniioiii will ascend out of hell, with the Hhelcinak at their /uead' (Weber, 351 [• 368]).
We turn now to the NT where the word n)'j;f occurs both transliterated and translated. There can be no reasonable doubt that the Greek word ffKTji'TJ ( = ' tabernacle') was from its resemblance in Round and meaning used by bilingual Jews for
the Heb. She/cinnh ; e.g. in Rev 21' ' Behold the ffitiji'j) of God is with men, and he will tabernacle ((TfCT/xiifffi) with them.' The allusion is equally clear in Jn l" 'The Logos . . . tabernacled {/(TK-^vaae") among us, and we beheld his glory.' — The concept ion of the Shekinah appears in Greek dress under the word Sli^a.. In several instances 56Ja is used of Deity or a manifestation-form of Deity, and thus shows itself to be the equivalent of Shekinah. We will first cite one or two pas- sages from the Apocrj-pha. In Enoch 14^ we read, 'And the Great Glory sat thereon, and his raiment shone more brightly than the sun'; Enoch 102^ ' The angels will seek to hide them- selves from the presence of the Great Glory'; To 3'" ' The praj'er of both was heard before the glory of the Great One,' ivibwiov t^s o6^r)s toO fieyaXov [Query : Since Tobit was translated from a Semitic source, is it not likely, with Enoch before us, that the Greek ought to be ipuiriov T^5 5o'f ijs T^s ixcyaXi)'! : ' before the Great Glorv ' ?] ; Sir 17" 'Their eyes saw the majesty of the glory.' In the NT there are several instances in which 56Jo is used as more or less the equivalent of Shekinah. In Ko 9', where St. Paul is enumerat- ing, with patriotic fervour, the privileges of the Jew, and amongst others mentions ' the giving of the law' and 'the glory,' he evidently means 'the Shekinah-glory ' : as in He 9' 'the cherubim of glory' means 'the cherubim on which the She- kinah w.is enthroned.' So in He P when the Son of God is said to be ' the ellulgenee of the glory ' (not 'of /ii.9 glory') it seems probable that the Shekinah was intended, in the sense of 'the mani- fested Deity.' The personality of the Sliekinah is implied in 2 P 1", where we read (translating literally), ' when such a voice was borne iu to him by (inrb) the majestic glory.' The word inrb denotes the agent. ' The glory ' is the speaker : as in Targ. Jerus. of Gn 28" the glory of J" says, ' I am the God of Abraham ' ; and as is possibly implied in Mt 17° ' A bright cloud overshadowed them, and there eaiue a voice out of the cloud.' 2 Mac 2", in anticipating the fullilment of OT propliccj% says, ' The glory of the Lord shall be sun and the cloud.'