Exodus 25:17
Thou shalt make also a propitiatory of the purest gold: the length thereof shall be two cubits and a half, and the breadth a cubit and a half.
The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Facies et propitiatorium de auro mundissimo : duos cubitos et dimidium tenebit longitudo ejus, et cubitum ac semissem latitudo.
- Septuagint (Swete) shown from Exodus 25:16
- καὶ ποιήσεις ἱλαστήριον ἐπίθεμα χρυσίου καθαροῦ, δύο πήχεων καὶ ἡμίσους τὸ μῆκος, καὶ πήχεος καὶ ἡμίσους τὸ πλάτος.
- Hebrew (WLC)
- וְעָשִׂ֥יתָ כַפֹּ֖רֶת זָהָ֣ב טָה֑וֹר אַמָּתַ֤יִם וָחֵ֨צִי֙ אָרְכָּ֔הּ וְאַמָּ֥ה וָחֵ֖צִי רָחְבָּֽהּ
Haydock's commentary
A propitiatory: a covering for the ark; called a propitiatory, or mercy-seat, because the Lord, who was supposed to sit there upon the wings of the cherubims, with the ark for his footstool, from thence shewed mercy. It is also called the oracle, ver. 18 and 20, because, from thence, God gave his orders and his answers. (Challoner)
It was the lid or covering of the ark, from kapha, "to cover, efface," &c. (Calmet)
Here the hanan, or cloud representing God, rested, (Leviticus xvi. 2.) and the divine oracles were audibly given: for which reason, God is said to sit upon the cherubims, the mercy-seat being his footstool, Psalm lxxix. 2.
From Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary, 1859, in the transcription made by Todd Easton and kept online by John Paul Wohlschied at johnblood.gitlab.io/haydock.
The Fathers on this verse
St Irenaeus Against Heresies: Book II, Chapter XXIV. Folly of the arguments
3. For, choosing out of the law whatever things agree with the number adopted in their system, they thus violently strive to obtain proofs of its validity. But if it was really the purpose of their Mother, or the Saviour, to set forth, by means of the Demiurge, types of those things which are in the Pleroma, they should have taken care that the types were found in things more exactly correspondent and more holy; and, above all, in the case of the Ark of the Covenant, on account of which the whole tabernacle of witness was formed. Now it was constructed thus: its length was two cubits and a half, its breadth one cubit and a half, its height one cubit and a half; but such a number of cubits in no respect corresponds with their system, yet by it the type ought to have been, beyond everything else, clearly set forth. …