Hebrews 9:4

Having a golden altar of incense, and the ark of the covenant overlaid round about with gold, wherein was a golden pot holding the manna, and Aaron's rod that budded, and the tables of the covenant.

The golden altar was discussed under the preceding verse. From its location, it is more readily identified with the sanctuary than with the Holy of Holies. A more detailed examination of the other things mentioned here and which were in the Holy of Holies will not be attempted. None of the articles described here was ever found in the Herodian temple; and it was perhaps for this very reason that the author of Hebrews elected to draw his illustrations from the tabernacle, rather than from the temple; therefore, the emphasis here on the tabernacle, not the temple, does not mean that the temple had been destroyed when Hebrews was written. The temple of Solomon was said to have all the articles mentioned here, except the pot of manna and Aaron's rod that budded. Long before New Testament times, the Chaldeans had sacked Jerusalem and carried away the ark of the covenant which they never returned; and, in the times of Josephus, a contemporary of Christ and the apostles, that Jewish historian related that there was nothing whatever behind the veil within the Holy of Holies.[5] Thus there was sound logic in appealing to the tabernacle, rather than to the current temple, to bear the weight of analogy so important to the theme of the book of Hebrews.

THE ARK OF THE COVENANT

Taking a cubit as eighteen inches, the ark of the covenant was a gold box, 45 inches long, 27 inches wide, and 27 inches deep; and, in addition to its extravagant cost, its principal glory rested in its location within the Holy of Holies, and in its contents mentioned above, which included the sacred tables of the Decalogue itself. One may feel, therefore, some of the excitement and thrill of Moses who received instructions from God for making the ark and placing it in the most holy place (Exodus 25:10,11). Having a golden crown about its top and inlaid within and without with pure gold, it was indeed a fitting receptacle of the sacred tablets on which God inscribed the commandments of the Decalogue. Moses might very well have thought, "Surely God has gone the limit of making holy things in such an object as the ark of the covenant." (See under "Mercy Seat," below.)

The golden pot holding the manna and Aaron's rod that budded were not said in the Pentateuch to have been placed in the ark of the covenant; but no objection can be lodged against the statement in Hebrews to that effect, because such a keeping place would have been perfectly in line with God's instructions that they were to be "laid up before the Lord" (Exodus 16:33), and "before the testimony" (Numbers 17:10). Rather than attempting a full discussion of these two items and the glorious events memorialized by them, we choose to fall back on the reason alleged by the author of Hebrews himself that these are some of the things of which "we cannot now speak severally," the reason being that far too much time and space would be required.

And the tables of the covenant effectively identify the covenant spoken of in Hebrews as the Decalogue covenant. Jeremiah's great prophecy of the new covenant, more fully discussed in Hebrews 8, plainly identified the old covenant as the one God made with Israel and Moses at the time of the exodus from Egypt, the one containing the ten commandments, and the one which Israel did not keep. Efforts to dissociate the moral part of that covenant from the annulment that fell upon it fail in the light of such clear identification as this.