Where God Dwells

At the dedication of the temple, Solomon confesses that Yahweh dwells in the thick darkness. The God known only as light appeared in thick darkness both at Mount Sinai and in the Most Holy Place.

This darkness is not evil; it points to God’s infinity, which human wisdom and knowledge can never fully contain. Just as no light, however great, can light up an infinite space, the more one comes to know God, the more one’s own ignorance only grows. Even so, God set his name in the temple and, confining himself to a lowly place, chose to be with his people.

The temple was not a place where people confined God but a place of meeting that God had granted, and his presence depended on obedience to the covenant. Later, when Israel forsook the covenant, the temple was finally destroyed. Remembering that the more one knows, the more the boundary of what one does not know grows as well, it is right to become all the more humble before God as the knowledge of him grows.