I Will Walk Among You: The Tabernacle in the Camp and the Temple of the Living God
Old Testament: Leviticus 26:11-12
I will set my tabernacle in the midst of you, and my soul shall not cast you off. I will walk among you, and will be your God, and you shall be my people.
Old Testament, also: Genesis 3:8
And when they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in paradise at the afternoon air, Adam and his wife hid themselves from the face of the Lord God, amidst the trees of paradise.
New Testament: 2 Corinthians 6:16; 2 Corinthians 7:1
And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? For you are the temple of the living God; as God saith: I will dwell in them, and walk among them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. ... Having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of the flesh and of the spirit, perfecting sanctification in the fear of God.
The connection
In the garden the Lord God walked, and the first thing sin did was send man to hide from that walking: "when they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in paradise ... Adam and his wife hid themselves." The rest of the story is God coming back to walk with man again. At Sinai He promises it. "I will set my tabernacle in the midst of you ... I will walk among you, and will be your God, and you shall be my people." The God who walked in Eden will walk in the camp, in a tent at the centre of it, among a people He has not cast off. St Paul quotes the promise, "as God saith", and tells the Corinthians where it is now kept: "you are the temple of the living God." "I will dwell in them, and walk among them." The tent in the camp became the Temple in Jerusalem, the Temple became the Body of Christ, and in Christ His people have become the temple He walks in. So Paul draws the conclusion the tabernacle always implied: what God dwells in must be kept holy. "Having therefore these promises ... let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of the flesh and of the spirit."
Moral sense
The body and the soul of a Christian are not a private place that God visits; they are His dwelling, and He walks there. Holiness of body and spirit is the answer to that presence, not the price of earning it: the promise comes first, and the cleansing follows because of it. And where the temple has been defiled, Adam's way of hiding is never the answer. The God who walked in the garden came looking.
Anagogical sense
The last word on the promise is the city: "Behold the tabernacle of God with men, and he will dwell with them. And they shall be his people." The walking that was lost in Eden, promised in the camp and begun in the temple of the Church, is finished where there is no temple, because the Lord God Almighty is its temple, and the Lamb.
The Fathers
Aphrahat, Demonstration of Faith: "And when his whole structure is raised up, consummated, and perfected, then he becomes a house and a temple for a dwelling-place of Christ."
Warrant
Scriptural because 2 Corinthians 6:16 quotes Leviticus 26:12 with "as God saith". Checked in the originals: the Septuagint of Leviticus 26:12 and Paul both have "I will walk among" (emperipateso), and Genesis 3:8 has the Lord walking (peripatountos) in paradise, the same verb without the prefix; joining Genesis 3:8 to the promise is the entry's own, resting on that shared word. Paul's "I will dwell in them" answers the tabernacle of Leviticus 26:11, which the Septuagint renders covenant (diatheke) where the Hebrew and the Vulgate have tabernacle. Aphrahat (Demonstration of Faith) joins the promise to "Ye are the temple of God" and reads it of the believer built up into a dwelling place of Christ. The anagogical sense quotes Apocalypse 21:3 and 21:22.
Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 797.
The verses
Leviticus 26:11 · Leviticus 26:12 · Genesis 3:8 · 2 Corinthians 6:16 · 2 Corinthians 7:1
