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Beit HaMikdash

ארון הברית

The Ark: a historical and future question

Present in the Mishkan and the First Temple; absent from the Second; unknown for the future.

Text, diagram and reconstruction

וְעָשׂוּ אֲרוֹן עֲצֵי שִׁטִּים אַמָּתַיִם וָחֵצִי אָרְכּוֹ וְאַמָּה וָחֵצִי רָחְבּוֹ וְאַמָּה וָחֵצִי קֹמָתוֹ׃

And they shall make an ark of acacia-wood: two cubits and a half shall be the length thereof, and a cubit and a half the breadth thereof, and a cubit and a half the height thereof.
The Holy Scriptures: A New Translation

Dimensions and materials

Size
2.5 x 1.5 x 1.5 amotTorah text: Stated in the Five Books of Moses.

Acacia wood overlaid with gold inside and out; a golden cover with two cherubim.

Function

Held the Tablets of the covenant. 'There I will meet with thee.'

Daily and annual use

None: it stood in the Holy of Holies.

Before it the High Priest placed the incense on Yom Kippur in the First Temple.

Interpretations

The site does not add symbolic readings here.

Historical questions

  • Rabbinic tradition counts the Ark among five things absent from the Second Temple.
  • Where is it? The Mishnah records a family tradition that it was hidden under the wood store; in the Talmud, Rabbi Eliezer says it was exiled to Babylonia, while others hold it was hidden in its place.
  • Will it return? No source the site relies on states this with certainty.

In the Third Temple

Open question: The sources disagree or are silent. The site does not choose an answer.

Open question. The site never depicts the Ark in the Third Temple.

All sources for this object