Last week we dealt with Jerusalem as the political capital of David’s united kingdom, that it was, in Rav Bin Nun’s words, עיר אל־שבטית ועל־שבטית. Now we will look at the other side of Jerusalem, as the religious capital of Israel. Immediately after taking Jerusalem, David decides to move the ארון from קרית יערים to Jerusalem:
Why there? The Mishkan at this point in history is in Givon, with the central altar. It is the religious center of the country. Why move to a new city?
The Torah discusses the centralization of worship in Israel in Parashat Re’eh:
There’s an important detail in this:
The establishment of the Mikdash is a unique mitzvah, in that it requires the participation of a נביא. Other mitzvot expressed forbid the input of a נביא; לא בשמים היא.
(for more details on this, see the shiur on פרשת ראה תשע״ו)
But here, it only says ויקהל דויד את כל ישראל אל ירושלם. Where’s the נביא? How can David do this on his own?
When דברי הימים describes how בני ישראל returned from exile to re-establish the בית המקדש, it says at the end of the genealogical lists:
דויד ושמואל הראה set up the structure of the משמרות, the personnel of the מקדש, and presumably the other details of it’s structure and location. But when did David meet with Samuel to do this? There are only two times recorded when they met; first, at David’s annointing:
Samuel never talks to David; he is still mourning the end of Saul’s kingdom. The next time they meet is when David runs away from Saul’s assasins (this is right before the story of מחר חודש):
Samuel lives in רמה. What is נוית?
Targum translates נוית as בית אולפנא, a school. רד״ק elaborates:
A נוה is literally a sheepcote, a shelter. But it has a specific metaphoric meaning:
נוית was Samuel’s yeshiva, where he retired from being Saul’s נביא. It was a both a school for בני נביאים and a sort of מכון המקדש for planning the future בית המקדש.
חז״ל understand that this is what David and Samuel discussed:
There are other details of David’s meeting with Samuel hinted at in דברי הימים, when David presents the plans of the בית המקדש to his son:
What was this כתב מיד ה׳?
To sum up:
So the establishment of the בית המקדש requires מסורת, רוח הקדש and דרישה. We’ve seen דרישה: the whole understanding of the pasuk ובין כתפיו שכן (and possibly David’s political aspirations as well, as we shall see). We’ve seen רוח הקדש: that’s the role of שמואל הנביא. What about מסורת?
The עקדה was in ארץ המריה. That’s significant:
The other interesting point is that this particular altar is called המזבח, the altar. This is different from the other three altars that Abraham built:
Here’s how the Pirkei D’Rabbi Eliezer sees it:
The Rambam explains that this is the reason for the location of the מזבח in the בית המקדש:
Note that it is the location of the מזבח that is important, not the קדש הקדשים. There is some discussion of the אבן השתיה in the midrashim (especially Tanchuma) as the “center of the world” but it is not the מסורת that establishes the “best” location for the בית המקדש.
It is striking that the Rambam includes midrashic sources in the משנה תורה, a halachic work:
It’s very rare for Rambam to do this. Why do we need to know the reason for the location of the מזבח?
I would suggest (based on an essay by Gidon Rothstein) that it goes back to the famous argument between the Rambam (Guide for the Perplexed, 3:32) and the Ramban (ויקרא א:ט) on the reasons for sacrifices. The Rambam says that sacrifices were incorporated into the mitzvot because that is what other, idolatrous cultures did, and ה׳ could not eliminate that from בני ישראל's mindset, so He limited it and made it part of the system of mitzvot. They are a concession to human nature, not a truly spiritual rite.
The Ramban strenuously objects, citing the fact that sacrifices predate idolatry, and even צדיקים in ספר בראשית brought them. Clearly there is a spiritual meaning and significance to the קרבנית. The משך חכמה offers a compromise:
Thus sacrifices anywhere else would be an unfortunate concession, not the ideal way to serve ה׳. But at the historic מזבח, קרבנות have a meaning that they do not have anywhere else:
Church and State
So we see Jerusalem as a political and and religious center. Why would both of these end up in the same place?
But it was clearly intentional. As the Gemara says in the discussion of David and Samuel’s meeting, political and religious leadership are two different things. But they wanted to keep them together:
One might be cynical and propose that David wanted the Mikdash in his capital to keep it under his control, but we will not be that cynical.
The reverse is more likely true: the political leadership needed to be in close proximity to the Mikdash to keep them (the king and judges) righteous:
Rabbi Shulman understands the pasuk in קוהלת to refer to this:
The king is גָבֹהַּ מֵעַל גָּבֹהַּ (the head of a system of government) but G-d is גְבֹהִים עֲלֵיהֶם. There needs to be a partnership of human and divine judgment to establish צֶדֶק.
But I think there was a more personal reason. This is David, who never really wanted to be king. He was dedicated to establishing a בית אלוקים:
And this was his one true desire:
He needed to have ה׳'s house next door. And in the end, that’s all that mattered.