The Tree Restored in the Holy of Holies – Revelation 22

The apostle John describes a massive perfect cube coming out of heaven, joining earth. There is only one cube I know of from the Bible, and that is the Holy of Holies (Vulgate, “Sanctum Sanctorum”; Hebrew “Ḳodesh ha-Ḳodashim,” or, more fully, “Bet Ḳodesh ha-Ḳodashim”) as described in the Old Testament.

I recently read the book “The Mother of the Lord Volume 1: The Lady in the Temple” by Margaret Barker. In this book she demonstrates that the religion of Israel prior to the reforms of Josiah and what scholars call “The Deuteronomists” was one that is quite different from what is described in the pages of what Christians call the Old Testament. In this pre-Josiah religion we see evidence that Israel believed in divine beings: A Father as well as a Heavenly Mother. These beings were worshipped/venerated and were symbolized in their rituals in a number of ways. One way in which the Mother was symbolized in the ancient temple was the sacred tree, sometimes referred to as the Tree of Life. Another post where you can read about the sacred tree is Hugh Nibley’s “The Garden, the Lady and the Tree.”

I am going to post just a few excerpts from her book as they relate to the text of Revelation 22.1-2. This text reads as follows:

1 And he shewed me a pure river of ^awater of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb.

2 In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the ^atree of ^blife, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month: and the ^cleaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.

From “The Mother of the Lord“:

In the book of Revelation John showed that early Christians had not forgotten the older temple. He described the missing items restored to the holy of holies: the ark (Rev. 11.19), the hidden manna restored to the faithful (Rev. 2.17), the cherub throne (Rev 4.6-8), the sevenfold spirit before the throne (Rev. 4.5), and the tree of life by the throne (Rev 22.1-2). This was probably the true menorah restored to the temple, the symbol of the Lady whom John saw in the holy of holies with her son (Rev. 12.1-6).^[1]Margaret Barker, The Mother of the Lord Volume 1: The Lady in the Temple, T&T Clark, 2012, p. 44.

A great tree had been forsaken and the land was desolate, but this situation would not last forever. There is something similar in the earliest source of 1 Enoch, a vision of the throne followed by a vision of a great tree. On his second heavenly journey, Enoch saw seven mountains. The one in the center was higher than all the others, and the archangel Michael explained that this was the throne of the Holy One. It was surrounded by trees, and one of which excelled all the others in beauty and fragrance. This tree, said Michael, could not be touched by any mortal, but after the great judgment it would be transplanted to a holy place beside the temple of the Lord, and its fruit would give life to the righteous and holy, the chose ones.^[2]Ibid, p. 96. See also: 1 Enoch 25.4-5, which reads as follows: “And this beautiful and fragrant tree, and no creature of flesh has authority to touch it until the great judgment, when he will … Continue reading

The tree must have been the tree of life. Immediately after this, Enoch saw a blessed place where there were trees with living branches that had sprouted from a felled tree. Since Enoch and Isaiah have much in common, Enoch’s vision of the displaced tree that would return to the temple may well reflect the same situation as Isaiah’s oracle of the Asherah, the Forsaken One returning to the land…

In the Hebrew Scriptures there is no record of a great tree in the temple holy of holies, but there was a ‘great tree’ in the sanctuary of the Lord at Shechem: ‘Joshua wrote all these words in the book of the law of God; and he took a great sonte, and set it up there under the oak, ‘lh, in the sanctuary of the Lord’ (Joshua 24.26).^[3]Ibid., p. 96.

The Lion Lady

There is in Ezekiel’s lament for the princes of Israel, Josiah’s son and grandson. Josiah’s queen was described as a lion. Jehoahaz son of Josiah reigned for only three months before the Pharaoh Neco removed him, took him to Egypt, and installed as king his brother, renamed Jehoiakim (2 Kings 23.31-37). The next king was Jehoichin son of Jehoiakim, who was taken prisoner to Babylon in 597 BCE (2 Kings 24.6-14). Ezekiel the temple priest described the royal family as a lioness and her whelps who were hunted and trapped in turn.

Moreover take thou up a ^alamentation for the princes of Israel, And say, What is thy mother? A ^alioness: she lay down among lions, she nourished her whelps among young lions. And she brought up one of her ^awhelps: it became a young lion, and it learned to catch the prey; it devoured men. The nations also heard of him; he was taken in their pit, and they brought him with ^achains unto the land of ^bEgypt. Now when she saw that she had waited, and her hope was lost, then she took another of her whelps, and made him a young lion. And he went up and down among the lions, he became a young lion…  Then the nations set ^aagainst him on every side from the provinces, and spread their net over him: he was ^btaken in their ^cpit. And they put him in ward in ^achains, and brought him to the king of Babylon: they brought him into ^bholds, that his voice should no more be heard upon the mountains of Israel. (Ezekiel 19.1-6a, 8-9)

The lioness here is not an individual queen, since the two princes mentioned in the poem were sons of different mothers, but they were both royal sons of the Lady. She could be described as a lion with whelps by a temple priest one generation after Josiah’s purge. In the lowest panel of the Taanach stand, then, the Lady with lions is presented in her familiar form.

Above her are two cherubim, which in the Jerusalem temple formed the throne in the holy of holies. The D writer mentions two cherubim (1 Kings 6.22-28) but not that they formed the throne. Perhaps this was something that could not be mentioned. When Ezekiel saw the throne leaving the temple, as we shall see, he described the Lady leaving. Had the cherub throne represented the Lady, this would explain the silence of the D writer. In Egypt, the great goddess Isis ‘was’ the throne. The hieroglyph on her name was a throne, and she was often depicted with the throne on her head. To sit on the throne was to sit on the lap of Isis. Something similar happened in Jerusalem: the Chronicler reveals that when Solomon sat on the throne of the Lord, the people ‘worshipped the Lord, the king’ (1 Chronicles 29.20, translating literally). The moment the enthronement was theosis, when the human king became the divine son, an image that was shown to the early Christians. When the Lamb, i.e., the human, was enthroned, he received the worship of heaven and earth (Revelation 5.6-14), and Mary was typically shown with her Son on her lap- the ancient throne image. In the second panel, the cherubim of the Taanach stand represented the Lady as the throne.^[4]Ibid., p. 159-160.

John’s Vision of the Lady

John received a similar summons (to that of Exodus 24): a sound like a trumpet spoke to him and said ‘Come up hither and I will show you what must take place after he heavnely throne with was surrounded by ‘many angels, myriads o myraids and thousands of thousands’ (Revelation 5.11). He saw the human being (The Lamb) approach the throne, receive the scroll (or book) and take his place on the throne. As he opened the book, so that the judgement unfolded from heaven to earth, and John watched. His vision encompassed the Lady giving birth to her son in the holy of holies (Revelation 12.1-2). When he was on Patmos, John assembled all the early Christian prophecies that became the Book of Revelation, and his inspiration was to present them within the framework of the old temple ritual: ‘The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign for ever and ever’ (Revelation 11.15).^[5]Ibid., p. 191.

New Testament Theology Deals with The Old Temple Ritual – First Israelite Temple Theology 1000 BCE – 586 BCE

According to Barker’s analysis of the texts at her disposal, readers of the New Testament miss significant clues if they focus solely on what the Old Testament as it is now appears tells us about temple religion. The authors of the New Testament understood First Israelite Temple Religion. They understood ascension, the creation drama, the Fall of Adam, Melchizedek and his powers, the concept of a council of gods, the enthronement of the King, and how the King as a duly authorized representative of Yahweh, was ritually “slain” and resurrected in the First Temple period each year at the Feast of Tabernacles. This was critically important to put all of the House of Israel under covenant to love and obey Yahweh. This ritual was the glue that cemented the people Israel. She writes:

New Testament scholars had been basing their work on the wrong premises and on the wrong covenant. More than half the references to covenant in the New Testament occur in Hebrews, where the primary context is not Sinai but Abraham, Melchizedek and the Day of Atonement (Hebrews 7.15-9.22), none of which has any place in the D writings.^[6]Ibid., p. 208.

Ezekiel and John’s memory of the Temple

Barker makes the case that both Ezekiel and John are showing us the temple as it originally was: a place that taught mankind about the Gods, specifically both the Heavenly Father, Heavenly Mother, and the Son. The first temple taught the children of Israel about Atonement, creation, fall, and a dying god who would gain the victory over death. In the middle of the heart of the temple was the throne, (I would add probably two – one for the king and one for the queen) and this throne was a symbol for God’s love and protection of his people, as well as an invitation. It was an invitation to holiness, to become like God ritually. To come back into his presence.

Barker writes:

An angel with a measuring reed showed him the exact plan and measurements of the true temple that Israel had to restore, including the pictures on its walls (Ezekiel 41.15-26), and then Ezekiel saw the glory of the Lord return: ‘And the vision which I saw was like the vision I saw when I came to destroy the city and the life vision which I saw by the River Chebar, and I fell down on my face’ (Ezekiel 43.3, my translation of a rather confused text). The glory of the Lord then entered through the eastern gate and filled the temple, and Ezekiel was told to instruct the house of Israel in all the ways of the true temple, not just its plan and measurements, but the laws for temple worship and for daily life. Finally, he saw a river flowing from the temple with trees growing on its banks, whose fruit was for food and whose leaves were for healing (Ezekiel 47.1-12). In John’s vision, this water of life was flowing from the throne in the holy of holies, around the tree of life which was the symbol of the Lady restored to her temple (Revelation 22.1-2). Again, the question is: how long is memory? Did John and the early Church know the original significance of Ezekiel’s vision, given that they knew the throne as a symbol of the Lady- or was this all John’s innovation?^[7]Ibid., p. 246.

The Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice: The 7 Torches Before the Throne

When John saw the Lady restored to the temple, he saw her as the seven torches before the throne, then giving birth to her son, and finally as the tree of life, all in the holy of holies (Revelation 4.5; 12.4-5; 22.1-2). The original menorah must have been the tree of light in the holy of holies, and this was the ‘asherah’ that Josiah removed. The effect of this light within the golden cube of the holy of holies is accurately remembered in the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice. The multiple reflections of the seven lamps withing the golden cube behind the multi-colored curtain would have created the impression of a place of fire, flickering around the golden cherubim, and the high priest when he entered would have seen multiple reflections of himself, a man in white. This is what the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice describe: the reflection of the lamps and the woven temple veil within the golden interior, especially the prominence of scarlet.^[8]Ibid., p. 253.

The Holy of Holies as a Fiery Cube

The holy of holies represented the origin and heart of the creation, and was a 20-cubit cube lined with gold (1 Kings 6.20). It represented the light that preceded material creation, Day One, but Philo knew the holy of holies as a place of darkness, and in his time it was dark and empty. If the menorah that represented the Lady and been removed by Josiah, and the second temple menorah was set in the outer part of the temple, as prescribed for the tabernacle which was influenced by the usage of the second temple (Exodus 40.24-25), this would have meant a holy of holies without light in the second temple. The Lady, as John knew, was restored to the holy of holies as the sevenfold torches before the throne (Revelation 4.5), or as the tree of life by the throne (Revelation 22.2). In the first temple, the throne that Isaiah knew was ‘a place of devouring fire… the burning mass of eternity’, where the righteous would ‘see the king in his beauty’ (Isaiah 33.14, 27 my translation), the earliest part of 1 Enoch describes the holy of holies as ‘the second house… built of flames of fire… Flaming fire was round about him and a great fire stood before him’, Daniel saw a throne of flames over streams of fire (Daniel 7.9-10); and Ezekiel described fire around and within the throne, in which he saw moving shapes. Those who knew the first temple, and those who remembered what it had been like, remembered the fiery cube that had been the holy of holies.^[9]Ibid., p. 276.

It is worthy to note what Joseph Smith said in relation to this subject:

The Prophet Joseph Smith explained, “God Almighty Himself dwells in eternal fire; flesh and blood cannot go there, for all corruption is devoured by the fire,” but a resurrected being, “flesh and bones quickened by the Spirit of God,” can (Luke 24:36-43; 1 Cor. 15:50).^[10]Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p. 326, 367. Heaven, not hell, is the realm of everlasting burnings, a view contrasting with the popular conception of hell as a place of fire, brimstone, and searing heat. Heat is a characteristic of God’s glory (D&C 133:41-44).

Only those cleansed from physical and moral corruption can endure immortal glory (3 Ne. 27:19; Moses 6:57; TPJS, p. 351). Hence, Isaiah rhetorically asked, “Who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire? who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings?” (Isa. 33:14). Joseph Smith taught, “All men who are immortal (i.e., resurrected beings in any of the degrees of glory) dwell in everlasting burnings.”^[11]TPJS, pp. 347, 361, 367. Resurrected bodies are qualitatively different according to their glory (1 Cor. 15:39-44; D&C 88:28-32).

Describing a vision of the Celestial Kingdom, Joseph Smith reported, “I saw the transcendent beauty of the gate through which the heirs of that kingdom will enter, which was like unto circling flames of fire; also the blazing throne of God, whereon was seated the Father and the Son” (D&C 137:2-3).

Tree of Life and the Burning Bush

The burning bush is how her tree of life was remembered. When Enoch ascended through the heavens he saw the tree of life in the third heaven. ‘That tree is indescribable for pleasantness and fine fragrance, and is more beautiful than any (other) created thing that exists. And from every direction, it has an appearance which is gold-looking and crimson, and with the form of fire.’ It had ‘something of every orchard tree and every fruit’. One of the Nag Hamadi texts, whose modern title is On the Origin of the World, describes the tree of life standing next to the tree of knowledge in Paradise: ‘The colour of the tree of life is like the sun and its branches are beautiful. Its leaves are like those of a cypress. Its fruit is like the clusters of white grapes. Its height rises up to heaven. Wisdom, compared her tree-self to several trees; ‘I grew tall like a cedar… like a cypress… like the palm tree… like rose plants… like a beautiful olive tree… like a plane tree’ (Ben Sira 24.13-14). The tree of life was not any one particular tree. John saw the tree of life with twelve kinds of fruit, one for each month (Revelation 22.2), and the prescriptions for the tabernacle menorah say that the lamp had to be made of gold, with seven branches on which were cups and flowers like almonds (Exodus 25.31-39). The burning bush which Moses saw on Sinai had formerly been the golden tree of life by the throne in the temple, and the Lady spoke from here tree.^[12]Mother of the Lord, p. 331.

So much of Barker’s book is an illustration of how the religion of the Israelites changed over time. Circumstances led Israel to move away from a religion that taught of a god and his heavenly wife (as well as the redeeming son), to a more monotheistic belief whereby Yahweh became the Father and the Son, thus combining the characteristics of both deities (and even several others in the Ancient Near Eastern world!). Barker, in my mind, gave ample evidence that the writers of the New Testament understood, at least in part, these earliest traditions of the Israelite faith before the destruction of the first temple. I would recommend this book to any serious student of the Bible, and especially those curious about First and Second Temple Judaism and how these traditions shaped the Israelite view of God, his wife, and how these beings should be worshiped.

Further Reading:

William Dever, Did God have a wife?: Archaeology and Folk Religion in Ancient Israel. Eerdmans, 2008.

Raphael Patai, The Hebrew Goddess (Jewish Folklore & Anthropology) 3rd Revised edition, Wayne State Univeristy, 1990.

Mark Smith, The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel (The Biblical Resource Series), Eerdmans, 2010.

Mark Smith, The Origins of Biblical Monotheism: Israel’s Polytheistic Background and the Ugaritic Texts, Oxford University Press, 2001.