Texts in Conversation
Exodus 37 describes the gold menorah like a tree, giving it branches, buds, and almond blossoms. Zechariah’s vision brings that tree to life, surrounding the lampstand with two olive trees that pour their oil into it.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Exodus 37:17
Hebrew Bible
17 Bezalel made the lampstand of pure gold. He made the lampstand of hammered metal; its base and its shaft, its cups, its buds, and its blossoms were from the same piece. 18 Six branches were extending from its sides, three branches of the lampstand from one side of it, and three branches of the lampstand from the other side of it. 19 Three cups shaped like almond flowers with buds and blossoms were on the first branch, and three cups shaped like almond flowers with buds and blossoms were on the next branch, and the same for the six branches that were extending from the lampstand. 20 On the lampstand there were four cups shaped like almond flowers with buds and blossoms, 21 with a bud under the first two branches from it, and a bud under the next two branches from it, and a bud under the third two branches from it; according to the six branches that extended from it. 22 Their buds and their branches were of one piece; all of it was one hammered piece of pure gold. 23 He made its seven lamps, its trimmers, and its trays of pure gold. 24 He made the lampstand and all its accessories with seventy-five pounds of pure gold.
Zechariah 4:2
Hebrew Bible
1 The angelic messenger who had been speaking with me then returned and woke me, as a person is wakened from sleep. 2 He asked me, “What do you see?” I replied, “I see a menorah of pure gold with a receptacle at the top. There are seven lamps at the top, with seven pipes going to the lamps. 3 There are also two olive trees beside it, one on the right of the receptacle and the other on the left.”
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Notes and References
... For all its reliance on the single lampstand portrayed in the Pentateuch, the visionary lampstand of Zechariah 4 also probably reflects, with its multispouted lamps, features of the stands that existed in the monarchic temple. To a certain extent, Zechariah's lampstand is a conflation of the two traditions, the premonarchic and the preexilic. Or at least it represents a combination of an archaic written source with the late Iron Age technology of cultic lamps. The various reconstructions of the Zechariah lampstand by North ([1970]), who reports on earlier attempts at reconstruction, as by Galling and Mohlenbrink, and then offers his own, bear little resemblance to the first-century Common Era witnesses of the Second Temple menorah (e.g., the graphic testimony of the Arch of Titus or the coins of Antigonus or the literary testimony of Philo and Josephus or the Mishna). ...
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