ark of Yahweh

150:8.6The ruler of the syn­a­gogue then took his place be­fore the ark, or chest, con­tain­ing the sa­cred writ­ings and be­gan the recita­tion of the nine­teen prayer eu­lo­gies, or bene­dic­tions. But on this oc­ca­sion it was de­sir­able to shorten the ser­vice in or­der that the dis­tin­guished guest might have more time for his dis­course; ac­cord­ingly, only the first and last of the bene­dic­tions were re­cited. The first was: “Blessed is the Lord our God, and the God of our fa­thers, the God of Abra­ham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Ja­cob; the great, the mighty, and the ter­ri­ble God, who shows mercy and kind­ness, who cre­ates all things, who re­mem­bers the gra­cious promises to the fa­thers and brings a sav­ior to their chil­dren’s chil­dren for his own name’s sake, in love. O King, helper, sav­ior, and shield! Blessed are you, O Yah­weh, the shield of Abra­ham.”

150:8.8Then the chazan went over to the ark and brought out a roll, which he pre­sented to Je­sus that he might read the Scrip­ture les­son. It was cus­tom­ary to call upon seven per­sons to read not less than three verses of the law, but this prac­tice was waived on this oc­ca­sion that the vis­i­tor might read the les­son of his own se­lec­tion. Je­sus, tak­ing the roll, stood up and be­gan to read from Deuteron­omy: “For this com­mand­ment which I give you this day is not hid­den from you, nei­ther is it far off. It is not in heaven, that you should say, who shall go up for us to heaven and bring it down to us that we may hear and do it? Nei­ther is it be­yond the sea, that you should say, who will go over the sea for us to bring the com­mand­ment to us that we may hear and do it? No, the word of life is very near to you, even in your pres­ence and in your heart, that you may know and obey it.”

97:9.14Af­ter the de­feat of the Phil­is­tines, David gained pos­ses­sion of the “ark of Yah­weh,” brought it to Je­ru­sa­lem, and made the wor­ship of Yah­weh of­fi­cial for his king­dom. He next laid heavy trib­ute on the neigh­bor­ing tribes—the Edom­ites, Moabites, Am­monites, and Syr­i­ans.

88:2.5Moses, in the ad­di­tion of the sec­ond com­mand­ment to the an­cient Dala­ma­tian moral code, made an ef­fort to con­trol fe­tish wor­ship among the He­brews. He care­fully di­rected that they should make no sort of im­age that might be­come con­se­crated as a fe­tish. He made it plain, “You shall not make a graven im­age or any like­ness of any­thing that is in heaven above, or on the earth be­neath, or in the wa­ters of the earth.” While this com­mand­ment did much to re­tard art among the Jews, it did lessen fe­tish wor­ship. But Moses was too wise to at­tempt sud­denly to dis­place the olden fe­tishes, and he there­fore con­sented to the putting of cer­tain relics along­side the law in the com­bined war al­tar and re­li­gious shrine which was the ark.