John Bytheway:               00:00                   Welcome to part two with Dr. Shon Hopkin, 2 Samuel and 1 Kings.

Dr. Shon Hopkin:             00:07                   Let’s move then to what I think will be the last thing that we discuss. We’ve already given a nod to Solomon’s challenges. He’s going to struggle with these same things that David struggles with, that being what the restoration scripture warns against, which is to gratify your pride and exercise unrighteous dominion. He’s going to have conscripted service. And let me just give this quick nod before we move then to talk about the temple. There is another leadership principle that Solomon ends up betraying and that is he gets the benefits that he wants in a way that works short term but is going to lay the foundation for long-term challenges and disunity in his kingdom. When he overtaxes or overconscripts or is too demanding in a way that is unhealthy, then he’s preparing his kingdom for future dissolution. And I do think we at times will use shortcuts to get the effects that we want.

                                           01:11                   We can do this as parents. We can do this as leaders. We can do this with each other. I think the other leadership principles in Doctrine and Covenants 121 that we’ve been quoting from so often, gentleness and meekness and persuasion, love unfeigned, reproving betimes with sharpness when moved upon by the Holy Spirit and then showing forth an increase of love. These are the long-term strategies that are going to give the best fruits over the long haul. Solomon, unfortunately, with all the grandeur and all the early wisdom, he does some things that are going to set his son up for failure and the future kingdom up for failure. Let’s be careful to build for the millennium, so to speak, to build for the long term, the long haul.

Hank Smith:                      01:56                   That’s so well said. In fact, I have some wisdom here from the year of 2022. We were interviewing a guest about Genesis three and four. John, I don’t know if you remember this, but here’s what this guest said. Pick a sin, any sin. Not one that you do because that’ll be awkward, but think about any sin and how it’s actually motivated somewhere lower in the motivation. As we build towards that sin, I want to get something for nothing. And you could think of gossip that I want to use instead of building a relationship through love and sacrifice. I’m going to tell a secret that puts me in a position of trust with you. You could think of lying and how I want to shortcut the system or cheating to get something for nothing. You could think of breaking the law of chastity or pornography. At the click of a button, it looks the same as physical, sexual intimacy in marriage.

                                           02:46                   Typically, though, you court someone, you get married, you do the dishes, you go on dates, you raise children together, or I just get something for nothing. He said, all of us do this, by the way, being seduced by this getting something for nothing where we’re looking for shortcuts. But this idea that we want the easy path of getting something for nothing, it weakens us as humans. We are light and truth at our very core. And when we go to sin to get what we want, it warps who we are. And then we need the redemption that comes through the atonement of Christ and reaccepting truth. That first great truth of mortality, I am going to earn my bread by the sweat of my brow. John, I don’t know if you remembered that, but our guest was Dr. Shon Hopkin. It really impacted me, he said, look at the first commandment God gives to Adam. You’re going to work by the sweat of your brow and then look at what Satan says to Cain. You don’t have to do that. You can take what you want. The first commandment and the first temptation. Shon, does that kind of fit there?

Dr. Shon Hopkin:             03:48                   You have got to have improved that quote. That sounds way better than anything that would come out of my mouth. Hey, so thanks for whatever you did to polish that up. That was fun. I did not know you were going there. And then I was like, wait, this is familiar. That was very sneaky of you. And I do think it fits there. We want to build to endure and we’re tempted not to. We’re tempted to take those shortcuts.

John Bytheway:               04:12                   I think there were people who said, we want to see a sign. I think that was a something for nothing. I want the testimony, I don’t want any effort. I want the proof. I don’t want to do any research, any work. And when Jesus says it’s a wicked and an adulterous generation that seeketh after a sign, what’s adultery? I want the pleasure of another person. I don’t want the commitment of another person. They sound like the same thing.

Dr. Shon Hopkin:             04:38                   Doctrine Covenants 121 to me is a leadership manual, par excellence. There’s nothing like it to me. In the literature of the world, I find nothing more powerful. Here’s how you interact with other human beings to try to do good. It’s Doctrine and Covenants 121. I think it’s from about verse 28 or 30 and then up to 34 to the end. I very imperfectly take it as my guide anytime I’m trying to interact with others in positive ways. It’s pure, it’s powerful. How did Joseph Smith give us that? The Lord gave us that and I love it.

Hank Smith:                      05:19                   The essence of power came from a jail. The essence of freedom comes from a jail.

John Bytheway:               05:26                   We have brought that up a few times, haven’t we? I think that same thing, it’s the interpersonal relation, it’s, you read it and think, this is brilliant.

Dr. Shon Hopkin:             05:34                   And those three sins that I’ve been talking about, the three things that get us covering our sins, gratifying our pride, our vain ambition, and exercising unrighteous dominion, these show up like Saul, you could track his downfall with those three sins. It’s just fascinating how often that shows up and then once you start to see it, it shows up in our own lives. That level of just deep human insight to me came to Joseph Smith from God. Let’s look at the temple chapters here. Beautiful to see this young Solomon asking for wisdom, hard to see him struggle with some of the same kinds of challenges that David is struggling with. Seeing so many times these people that we love struggle, I hope, once again, serves as a warning to us. We tend to think, well, I, the way I do things is the best way. Let’s just be cautious that maybe I might see some of those same tendencies in my own life. Okay.

                                           06:30                   Let’s talk about the temple. There’s a fascinating thing here that I have used at times but maybe incorrectly. So let me just mention it. The tail end of 1 King 6 tells us how long it took Solomon, how long he spent building the temple, which was seven years. That’s a nice symbolic number of completion of creation and the temple commemorates this idea of creation and completion and is designed to create and bring us to completion. Then 13 years building his own palace. Seven years on the temple, 13 years building his own house, you already start to see things going a little bit awry for Solomon. That’s one reading of that and that may be an accurate reading. It may be just as accurate or more accurate. It’s a different approach. He’s hurrying, so to speak, with the temple. He is doing the temple first and devoting the most attention to that and taking longer to complete his own house.

                                           07:30                   I don’t know which of those is more accurate. It’s just sort of an interesting thing to think about and consider maybe. Then there’s another small point I want to make before we move to the dedicatory prayer. Let’s go to 1 Kings chapter 7:23. This is where you get a new thing. Usually when we see depictions of the temple, the ancient temple, what we’re actually looking at is the tabernacle and the way that it was designed. And Solomon’s temple is very similar, but there’s a lot, there are a lot of differences as well. You don’t have the 12 oxen in the tabernacle. You get them in Solomon’s temple, and I want to make a point about that, but first let’s read a few verses here. I’ll read verse 23, “He made a molten sea, 10 cubits from one brim to the other. It was round all about. His height was five cubits, a line of 30 cubits to encompass it roundabout.

                                           08:21                   Under the brim of it, roundabout were knops compassing it 10 in a cubit, encompassing the sea roundabout. The knops were cast in two rows when it was cast. And here’s then the oxen. It stood upon 12 oxen. Three looking toward the north, three looking toward the west, three looking toward the south, and three looking toward the east. And the sea was set above them and all their hinder parts were inward. Well, for Latter-day Saints, of course, these oxen are beloved oxen because the baptismal fonts in our temples are, of course, set on the backs of 12 oxen that look like this and that symbolize one of the things they are going to symbolize is the tribes of Israel, God’s covenant, amongst his people. You’ve got … If you’re doing symbolic numbers, three is sort of this heavenly perfection and four is the four corners or quarters of the earth and so three times four is 12.

                                           09:16                   So you sort of have earth and heaven combined. God and his people are going to be in this covenant relationship, all of that. And then we could say more about the oxen. Here’s one point though that I think might be of interest and that is why don’t we have the oxen in the tabernacle? I will suggest an answer to that, not the answer, but an answer to that is the tabernacle is portable. It actually rides on the back probably of oxen as it moves throughout the wilderness, this giant structure. It’s portable. God moves with you. Now, what have we done? Like the other nations of the world, we’ve actually got a structure that actually doesn’t move, the temple’s in one place. And maybe one thing God is trying to communicate here is don’t misunderstand that you can only find me here in Jerusalem. I will be with you.

                                           10:13                   I move with you. And should you come up to the temple? Yes, you should. But when they are cast out of Jerusalem and the temple is destroyed in ancient societies, when your temple is destroyed, you’re done. Like some other God defeated your God, you’re over. Why do the Israelites make it through? Well, there’s this incredible vision that Ezekiel has where God is on this chariot with wheels. It’s like the ark has wheels. And you’re like, what is that? Well, he’s saying, I will still be in your midst. I’m not stuck in one place. You haven’t lost me or my influence because you’ve been cast out of your land to a far away land. I will be with you. I’m portable is the wrong way to talk about God, right? But don’t misunderstand that I’m stuck in only one place. I will be with you in the wilderness.

                                           11:11                   I will be with you in your time of need. I love that we’ve got this continued symbol of movement, of action, of not being cemented to one particular space that persists in Solomon’s temple here with these oxen that can still move that sea around, so to speak. And I would just say, I love going up to the temple. May we go up to the temple? Solomon’s about to talk about in his dedicatory prayer in the next chapter. May we seek after the Lord wherever we are. Wherever I am, may I know that he has power to find me there when my heart seeks after him.

Hank Smith:                      11:52                   That sounds enormous. Any idea of how big that is?

Dr. Shon Hopkin:             11:56                   Well, you could do the measurements, of course. Cubits are approximately, to the best of our understanding, 18 inches per cubit. And so if you’ve got 10 cubits, you’ve got 15 feet across. One of the biblical scholarly ideas here, and you’ll hear Dan Belnap talk about this, that’s one of our colleagues, is that all of these proportions, the altar was the same with Solomon’s temple and the idea is this is God’s territory and you should feel a little bit small here.

Hank Smith:                      12:26                   Okay.

Dr. Shon Hopkin:             12:26                   Everything is grand and everything is larger because you are entering into the realm of the all powerful God. You should feel some awe. It shouldn’t be casual. It shouldn’t be, hey, cool. I get to make a covenant with God or God makes a covenant with me. That we should be deeply awed that the omnipotent God of the universe enters into a relationship with us who are his children. He’s a benevolent Father. He is also the all powerful ruler of all things. Yeah, that might be one of the symbols.

Hank Smith:                      13:02                   Is that like the laver?

Dr. Shon Hopkin:             13:03                   Yes. This isn’t true in the tabernacle. You don’t have giant molten sea in the tabernacle. This is something that shows up in Solomon’s temple. They do have, if you continue reading the chapter, they’ve got a bunch of lavers as well that would have been in the courtyard as well. So you need a lot of water if you’re going to be doing animal sacrifices. There’s a lot of ritual washing and cleansing and then you also need water to make sure that the priests stay clean and ritually prepared. There’s a use there symbolically, ritually, and just functionally for that water.

Hank Smith:                      13:40                   Solomon would see one of ours and go, hmm, it’s okay. Kind of small, but it’s okay. Yeah.

Dr. Shon Hopkin:             13:45                   Yeah. Our baptismal fonts are built, you might say, are designed on the foundation that’s received through Solomon got that inspiration first and now our modern prophets have got inspiration. Here’s how we should build our baptismal fonts today in our temple baptismal fonts. Good. Wow. Just poked myself in the eye with my glasses. We can leave that in.

Hank Smith:                      14:08                   Yeah, this thing sounds huge, man.

Dr. Shon Hopkin:             14:10                   Yeah. Well, the altar is the same way. These are enormous shapes.

John Bytheway:               14:16                   Let’s talk about that. The molten sea was not a baptismal font then. It was water needed for the sacrifices.

Dr. Shon Hopkin:             14:23                   And for washing ordinances and so it has similarities and the symbolism is in some ways going to be similar to both the washings that we would identify with in our Latter-day Saint temple practice and it is about cleansing. It is about holiness before the Lord in ways that baptism also is, but we don’t have any understanding that baptisms were ever performed in that. They had mikvahs, mikva’ot, where they would ritually immerse and those are to prepare to come up onto the temple mount. So if there’s anything like that, we don’t see it clearly from anything that we can see in the biblical account. Hank you, we’re talking about these giant sizes. We often picture the cherubim on the Ark of the Covenant. If you look at the cherubim, 1 Kings 6, verse 23, within the oracle, he made two cherubim and we better do it accurately. I think Avram Shannon from a previous podcast was talking about this. This is Cherubim in Hebrew is the plural already. We don’t need an S on the end. What did you say, John? It’s not geeses. It’s geese-

John Bytheway:               15:42                   Geeses. Yeah.

Dr. Shon Hopkin:             15:43                    It’s not moose. It’s meese.

John Bytheway:               15:46                   Meeses. Yeah.

Hank Smith:                      15:47                    Mooses. Meesin.

Dr. Shon Hopkin:             15:51                   These are 10 cubits high. Look at this. So we tend to picture these cherubim that are on the mercy seat of the Ark of the Covenant, but in Solomon’s Temple, these are 10 cubits. We’re talking 15 feet tall and their wings are going to stretch. Look at verse 24. Five cubits was the one wing that’s seven and a half feet wide, five cubits the other wing of the cherub from the uttermost part of the one wing under the uttermost part of the other were 10 cubits, so 15 feet wide. And then again, the height of the one cherub was 10 cubits and so was it of the other cherub. And he set the cherubim, plural, but yeah, without the S, within the inner house, and they stretched forth the wings of the cherubim, so the wing of the one touched the one wall, the wing of the other touched the other wall, their wings touched one another in the midst of the house.

                                           16:35                   So when you see those different depictions that we’re used to seeing the tabernacle depictions, usually these are Temple of Solomon had some differences that were really powerful and really grand. Lots of gold, by the way. They’re in a position now that to bring their best looks different than what it looked like. Actually, you think of Kirtland Temple compared to Nauvoo compared to Salt Lake Temple. Bringing their best now, there’s going to be a lot more overlay of gold in Solomon’s temple than what you had in the tabernacle. Let’s talk about the dedicatory prayer. It is really powerful. You really do get Solomon’s wisdom. God did bless him to know how to go in and out before the people, how to lead this people. These prayers of faith. I love the prayer of the brother of Jared in the Book of Mormon where he is saying, we know thou canst do this and please bless us this really humble but faithful prayer. And you see Solomon doing this.

                                           17:42                   I love Hezekiah in Isaiah 37. He gives a really powerful prayer of faith in the temple. And let’s just pause for a second. The point that was made with the Come, Follow Me Manual is with the impermanence and the inconsistency of David and Solomon, David wanted to and then Solomon was allowed to. He gave them a temple that then allowed them to recenter again and again and again on their relationship with the Lord. And it’s still there when Assyria is the threat. Solomon’s long gone. Solomon did some things to mess things up, but the temple is still there. I love that with this Assyrian threat now jumping forward in the storyline to Hezekiah, here they come and what does Hezekiah do? This is such a Latter-day Saint sounding story. He goes to the temple and he prays to God in the temple and he sends to the prophet and as he’s praying in the temple or connected to his prayer in the temple, the answer to his prayer comes from the prophet to him.

                                           18:45                   And so you have temple, prophet, and the person who is trying to overcome a challenge in his life. And he can pray directly to the Lord and he does. And he goes to the temple in order to do that and then he gets this. I think of Latter-day Saints going to the temple maybe before a general conference session. I can pray to the Lord and then I will listen and be better prepared to hear what the Lord will say directly to me through his prophets. Such a Latter-day Saint way to view the world and it’s fun to see that there in the ancient texts, the Old Testament. All right so this beautiful prayer that he gives and the thing that strikes me as I reread this prayer is how focused it is not on your people are going to be perfect, but the temple, yes, is a place of prayer and a place of repentance and forgiveness over and over and over again.

                                           19:39                   Let’s look at verse 33. When thy people Israel be smitten down before the enemy, when we’ve got challenges, because they have sinned against thee and shall turn again to thee, where turn again as symbolized by return to the temple and confess thy name and pray and make supplication unto thee in this house, then hear thou in heaven and forgive the sin of thy people and bring them again. Shuv is the Hebrew there, right? This return or repent. 36, here’s another one. Then hear thou in heaven and forgive the sin of thy servants and of thy people Israel that thou teach them the good way wherein they should walk. The Hebrew word for, and then the later Jewish teachings of the commandments we should walk in are the halacha, literally the walk the way we walk in. It’s a path and we walk in it. It’s the path that leads to joy.

                                           20:35                   It’s not like do this, this and this, you walk in the path and that path leads you to joy. Then look at verse 38, What prayer and supplication soever be made by any man, by all thy people Israel, which shall know every man the plague of his own heart? How often do we go to the temple and only we know the plague of our own heart? It’s so beautifully expressed by Solomon, which shall know every man the plague of his own heart and spread forth his hands towards this house. Now you’re not even in the house, but you’re, it’s a symbol of your relationship with the Lord. Then hear thou in heaven thy dwelling place and forgive and do and give to every man according to his ways whose heart thou knowest, for thou, even thou knowest the hearts of the children of men. We have to make sure that we get verse 41.

                                           21:26                   Moreover, concerning a stranger that is not of thy people Israel, but cometh out of a far country. Verse 43, hear thou in heaven thy dwelling place. And I love this attention that we’re also going to see in Isaiah to the needs of those who have been outsiders, but bring them in, bless them, may we pay attention to those who have not been part of us but will be inspired by this practice and come and pray to the Lord because of this. Let me do one last one, verse 47, talking if they get scattered, if they’re scattered throughout the world, yet if they shall bethink themselves in the land, whether they were carried captives and repent and make supplication unto thee, verse 49, then hear thou their prayer and their supplication in heaven and maintain their cause and forgive thy people. And there’s this really cool thing that happens after he’s done praying to God, then he turns to bless his people.

                                           22:27                   I think Latter-day Saints, those particularly who have been endowed know just how powerful the temple is as a place of prayer. What we often don’t see is then those who are officiating in the ordinances turn and offer this kind of blessing upon us that Solomon does. I think one of the reasons why is because God is bringing all of us in in ways that weren’t possible for the ancient Israelites, all of us into his presence to then allow us to turn and bless others as we leave the temple. We become the priestly or the priestessly voice. Here’s King Solomon and God promises to make us kings and queens, priests and priestesses. The temple is the place where that begins to happen. When you go back and you’re officiating in an ordinance on behalf of another person, someone who’s passed away, you are, I’m not saying you are in the office of a priest or a priestess, but you are functioning in a priestly, priestessly function to perform an ordinance on behalf of another being.

                                           23:43                   We actually become as Solomon is in this storyline when we, as Latter-day Saints, come up to the Lord and worship and renew our covenants in His Holy House. So I think there’s lots going on here that’s really beautiful and powerful. His prayer is so poignant. It’s so vulnerable as he’s gone in or out before the people and he’s leading them to bring them safely home. Yeah, I don’t know if there’s some things that resonate with the two of you about our own Latter-day Saint temple observance and how you understand it and see it that sort of can be helpful for you with this chapter.

John Bytheway:               24:23                   I just love how he’s praying for every aspect of life and interaction with each other and with foreigners. I was looking up these seven points of the dedicatory prayer, judging each other verses 31 and 32, defeat in battle 33, 34, drought, 35 and 36, 37 through 40 natural disasters. The stranger and the foreigner, like you said, 41 through 43, victory in war 44, 45, and then about exile and captivity, 46 through 53. And to answer your question, I just underlined verse 43, that all people of the earth may know thy name. That’s the missionary effort right there.

Dr. Shon Hopkin:             25:11                   It is really powerful to see God willing to forgive his people and then use them. Notice the two times that tends to be when we can be endowed when we’re old enough, as soon as we’re prepared, but often right before he sends us out to the world to share the power of his name in the world and we’re going to gather a people or right before we get married and we’re going to create a people and try to gather that people. He wants us to do that. He wants us to know how to go in and out before the people, how to have an understanding heart. And then one other thing I’ll just highlight again, each man knows the plague of his own heart. God, you know the hearts. Each of us would agree nobody really knows what each of our fears and concerns, the weight of things that lie upon our hearts and even in a marriage relationship, there are vulnerable moments where you really, really come to know each other and see our hearts more deeply.

                                           26:20                   But so often, even when we’re in our covenant relationships, we walk those pretty privately. It’s hard to be fully open about those. There’s God, who knows. And this all started with Solomon saying, give me a heart to understand those things and then to judge correctly. I don’t know what Hank is dealing with. I don’t know what John’s dealing with. They don’t know what I’m dealing with. Any of you who are listening, but God knows. Solomon prayed for that. You each know the plague of your own heart and you know the hearts of men and women bless them. Heal them, heal them in their need.

John Bytheway:               26:59                   I love that verse 46. “If they sin against thee, for there is no man that sinneth not.” So we’re not putting on airs. We’re all messing up and we know it. Please help us. Thankfully, we have a God who loves his children. He has to remind us of that a lot. I think we need to remind each other of it a lot because he has made it so clear how interested he is in his children. Sometimes we think, ah, not me though.

Hank Smith:                      27:26                   I wonder if Nephi has not maybe these exact words but something like this because he tells us, I built a temple like unto the temple of Solomon. I couldn’t do it because I didn’t have all the precious things, but I, you know, I tried.

Dr. Shon Hopkin:             27:42                   Cherubim were a little smaller.

Hank Smith:                      27:44                   Nephi may have read something similar to these because you can almost hear Nephi in some of these, that if they’re carried away captive or far away that they will return to thee with all their heart and with all their soul, which led them away captive to these enemies, pray unto thee toward their land, which though gavest unto their fathers, the city which thou hast chosen, the house which I built for thy name, hear thou their prayer and their supplication in heaven, thy dwelling place, and maintain their cause. That’s interesting. Here we have the house of Israel who is chosen to bless the whole earth and at one point, maybe a little bit of a prophecy here, they’re going to be scattered. Please maintain their cause. There’s a feeling of Nephi and Jacob in that, that one day God will remember Israel and Isaiah.

Dr. Shon Hopkin:             28:35                   Yeah, absolutely. I had a fun experience during grad school. I presented at a conference the Modern Association of Professors of Hebrew Literature was the name of this group and I presented on how Latter-day Saints build on the foundation of Hebrew Bible imagery and practices and I showed a map of Utah and a map of Israel and sort of rotated the map so that the Salt Seas and the-

John Bytheway:               29:03                   Great Salt Lake and the Jordan River.

Dr. Shon Hopkin:             29:06                   They were pretty into it. But then one guy got agitated when I was talking about the building of temples and I talked about multiple temples in the proliferation of temples. He got agitated. He actually interrupted and said, you can’t do that. There is only one temple and this is a very land bound concept that’s the ancient view of God’s influence and redemption. You got to be redeemed to the land. You can’t do that only one temple. If you start multiplying temples, then you dilute the holiness, you dilute the power. And I was getting ready to respond and he got shouted down by other members of this conference. You don’t know what you’re talking about. Read your Bible again. They had multiple holy spaces. It’s only later they pull it into one. I was like, oh, well, okay, let’s move on then. And we just moved on and they did my work for me.

                                           29:53                   Pretty fascinating to watch that happen. We have our own concept, of course, and we’re, we’re quite, unique in this idea of a Christian people with temples, God dwells in heaven and he’s got physical children on this physical earth and there’s a locus, a space where we can go renew our covenants and seek after him. And the temple doesn’t get in the way of our relationship with the Lord. It brings us and unites us with God in heaven and allows us to understand him and remake and recreate those covenant relationships again and again and again.

Hank Smith:                      30:37                   Shon, speaking of that, I know you love the restoration. How is it for you to study the early prophetic ministry of Joseph Smith that, okay, we’ve got the Bible and Jesus and the Book of Mormon and then we’re going to start talking priesthoods and sacraments. So now we’re going away from Protestant America kind of, we’re becoming Catholic and then we’re going to start talking temple. I just want you to speak to that because you’re right, as Latter-day Saints, we’re a very Old Testament religion and I don’t know if all Latter-day Saints even realize that.

Dr. Shon Hopkin:             31:13                   Yeah. In this presentation I was, I talked about patriarchs and high priests and that’s not a typical sort of New Testament kind of a concept. It is really fascinating to me as sort of an Old Testament studies kind of a guy to see God bring together in one all of these things from antiquity to modernity. There’s a really powerful scripture in Isaiah where he says, In the last days, I’m going to bring the stranger, the foreigner, even the eunuch I will bring into my house, and there I will give them Yad Vashem, which is typically translated a memorial and a name or a place and a name, Shem is name. Yad literally is hand. I’m going to bring them into my holy house and there I will give them a hand and a name, my covenant hand and a name. In the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem, there is a hall of names where the names of those who could have been forgotten who died in the Holocaust are honored.

                                           32:23                   These are lives that were lived and we don’t want to forget who they are. I just love this Latter-day Saint temple effort that when Latter-day Saints go to the temple and we of course do work for our own ancestors, we are remembering the forgotten ones and saying, your life had meaning and it won’t be forgotten. I’m going to bring you into his holy house and you will receive there a hand and a name, a place and a name. You will have a home again, not as a forgotten one, but as one who God knows as well as he knows me today and I will remember you and I will honor you that remembering the forgotten ones, the outsiders, the marginalized, so to speak, and bringing them into God’s holy house is such a beautiful holy work that has meaning in my life. It changes me today. These practices are deeply inspiring to me. They are life changing to me.

John Bytheway:               33:20                   I love that. A hand and a name. Names that maybe haven’t been repeated for hundreds of years are spoken in reverence and in love in a temple. It’s pretty cool.

Hank Smith:                      33:31                   Yeah. Shon, just a question for my curiosity. It says, Solomon spread forth his hands toward heaven. Is that a common thing to pray that way in the ancient world? He’s not bowing his head and folding his arms.

Dr. Shon Hopkin:             33:46                   You actually see a lot of hand symbolism and you get this talked about fairly regularly the idea of uplifted hands uplifted to heaven in a sacrificial context. Then at times they would actually have a wave or a heave offering where they’d actually, I’ve sacrificed and now I lift that sacrifice before thee. Our Jewish friends will often talk about prayer in this way. Prayer is the modern day sacrifice that we are lifting to heaven, our faith, our time, our efforts that we lift before God to heaven. But there’s all kinds of really powerful, I talked about the Yad Vashem. There’s places in Psalms where, you know, the Psalmist is saying, pluck your hand out of your bosom and offer it to me. Let me reenter into this relationship with you where God is. And, you know, in Isaiah, he says, “I’m going to hold you by your right hand.” And then he says, “You hold me by my right hand and I’m going to walk through the fire with you.” And I just love this image of a loving heavenly Father walking hand in hand with his child. I’m going to walk with you and I’m the all-powerful ruler of all things, but I’m going to hold your hand.

Hank Smith:                      35:05                   It was always fun as a young father to have that little child walk up to you and put both their hands up, right? Like, pick me up. Right? Like, I’m here. So if I’m walking around the temple in Solomon’s day, would I see them praying with their hands up, not down, not bowing their head?

Dr. Shon Hopkin:             35:23                   Often, not necessarily always, but yes, often that would be a powerful ritual of prayer.

Hank Smith:                      35:29                   That’s interesting. That’s beautiful.

John Bytheway:               35:31                   Hank, where are you seeing that verse, the hands raised to heaven?

Hank Smith:                      35:34                   That’s 1 Kings 8:22. Solomon stood before the altar of the Lord in the presence of all the congregation of Israel and spread forth his hands toward heaven. Be hard to keep your hands up there that long. It’s a long prayer.

John Bytheway:               35:48                   Yeah. And that’s the illustration in the Come, Follow Me Manual shows that.

Hank Smith:                      35:53                   Shon, keep going here. If I’m walking through the temple, what else might I see?

Dr. Shon Hopkin:             35:57                   As far as their different sacrifices, you’ll get different things that they do. You’ll get a heave sacrifice that sort of they’re offering it in this gesture to heaven. You get a wave sacrifice where it’s sort of going across like this. You get hands up raised in prayer. One of the fascinating hand symbols that I studied and learned about from non-Latter-day Saint biblical scholars, I wrote a paper where I talk about this. When Aaron or other priests are being consecrated or set apart, basically they’re being ordained or set apart to priesthood office. They’re being given priestly power and authority. The Hebrew there is literally Malay Etayad. So they’re going to fill the hand. It doesn’t say consecrate. It says, and then the hand was filled of Aaron is what the Hebrew literally says there, which in the King James version, like, what? That doesn’t mean anything. So you just say they consecrated Aaron.

                                           36:56                   The idea there is the caph, which is the palm of the hand. The letter for caph is a cupped hand or if you’re reading it in the alphabet, it’s shaped like a “c”. If you think of an upwardly turned hand, that’s the idea. As Aaron is being ordained, he has an upwardly turned hand and God is placing symbols of power or of authority in the palm of the hand. They’re being placed in their oil for the sacrifice or even the blood of the sacrifice, pieces of the sacrifice that are going to then be used to officiate and that upwardly turned hand is filled with symbols of authority but also things that are needed to then function in the priesthood office. And then you turn that hand upside down and pour that out and use it to bless others. If we’re going to apply this in our lives when we’re set apart, it’s like God is pouring out blessings on us and we need to catch those.

                                           37:57                   We need to receive those in the symbols of power and of authority and the blessings. Let’s say I’m a primary teacher. I bless you with wisdom to teach. And then we go into the classroom and we turn our hands upside down and pour those blessings that we’ve been given out upon those that were blessing. And there’s other ways the symbol plays out. You can think of Christ receiving and then drinking the cup, the bitter cup. You can think of a sacrament cup that’s held in our upwardly turned hand. You can think of the way that he blesses us with power and authority in the various places that we serve in our callings, in our temple, covenant making, et cetera, et cetera.

Hank Smith:                      38:41                   Would that have anything to do with also they would catch the blood, right? They would catch the blood and then go sprinkle that out.

Dr. Shon Hopkin:             38:47                   You actually, and one of our colleagues has also written about this, Kerry Muhlestein has written about this. They found cups that were used in the ritual purposes from Egypt that actually the cup has a hand on it. So it’s like the cup is the hand. Then you’re catching blood in that cup so that it can be used as part of the sacrifice. And I think of the emblems of Christ’s body and blood placed in or that I take into and receive into my hand. There’s some real power there to that hand symbolism that’s hidden. It’s buried in the Hebrew Bible because of the way that it doesn’t come through in the King James Version translation.

Hank Smith:                      39:32                   Thank you. That was fantastic.

John Bytheway:               39:34                   If someone wanted to read that paper …

Dr. Shon Hopkin:             39:36                   It can be found in a Sperry volume, the Gospel of Christ in the Old Testament and it’s found on the Religious Studies Center and it’s called Christ and the Caph C-A-P-H is the name of the paper. It’s from 2009, so.

John Bytheway:               39:56                   Oh, thank you.

Dr. Shon Hopkin:             39:57                   Yeah, if anybody wants some light reading or if you’re having a hard time getting to sleep at night. That could be helpful. I actually like the paper personally, but I’m a little biased. Anyway, I don’t mean to insult my own paper. I find those symbols really powerful that for us as Latter-day Saints point us to Christ and to our own temple covenants.

Hank Smith:                      40:21                   If you want to have some good reading, you should just go to amazon.com, type in Shon, S-H-O-N, Hopkin, H-O-P-K-I-N. You’ll see some wonderful texts, including a fairly new one called Understanding Our Jewish Neighbors, which I thought was maybe the best explanation of Judaism for a Latter-day Saint I’d ever read.

Dr. Shon Hopkin:             40:38                   Thank you, Hank. The rabbi who was the co-author and who did the understanding of Judaism and then I did the, here’s some connections with Latter-day Saints that I think can be helpful. What he did is maybe the best short intro to Judaism I’ve ever read. I think it’s really well done. Rabbi Mark Diamond is who that is and he did a really great job. The temple as a place of prayer to me is sort of the primary thing you see over and over and over again in this chapter and that’s the way Latter-day Saints feel about it. We see in Israel today in Jerusalem, the Western Wall isn’t even the wall of the ancient temple, it’s the wall of the platform that the temple sat on top of that. It is a place of fervent prayer. It is still the place where people return, where Jews return to seek after the Lord in that covenant relationship, put little prayers or names or scraps of prayers and put them then, you know, in the cracks of the wall there. For us to see that ancient theme, may the temple be a place of prayer for me as well. What do I do when I go to the temple? My heart seeks after the Lord with all of my energy that I can muster.

Hank Smith:                      41:59                   That’s beautiful. This reminds me a little bit of Doctrine and Covenants Section 109 and then I look in the footnotes and it’s all over down there because we have these long dedicatory prayers in the church today and if someone’s thinking, why do we do that? Does it seem to come from here, 1 Kings eight?

Dr. Shon Hopkin:             42:16                   Absolutely, you can see the corollary, right? That Joseph Smith, through Revelation and probably also learning from what Solomon models, you get this model of this powerful dedicatory prayer. And by the way, God is going to come, the glory of God it says with Solomon’s experience and there’s a cloud an anan in Hebrew that fills the temple and the glory of God was there and that cloud seems to act like a veil to protect people from fully seeing the presence of God and his all powerful holiness, but they can feel the glory. They can feel God’s glory. And so if you think of veils and the way that we have to be prepared to see God’s glory, but he’s there. He’s there in the temple waiting for us.

Hank Smith:                      43:03                   The Lord appeared to Solomon. That’s so beautiful. And he says something very similar to Section 110, “I have hallowed this house, which thou hast built.”

Dr. Shon Hopkin:             43:12                   Yeah, this is what God does. Sometimes there’s this, well, seeing God face to face, that’s how, and I think often that’s motivated by wanting to be the coolest one or the most spiritual one in the room. God appears in a lot of ways in our lives and that’s one of the ways that he can appear. His love, his mercy, his encouragement has appeared to me again and again in sacred moments for me in the temple and I love that he is found there. My heart draws to him and then I’m able to find him.

Hank Smith:                      43:49                   I’ve come more and more of a testimony of studying the Old Testament because I want to understand the Restoration and the Book of Mormon. If I want to understand those, the Old Testament opens up a new world to me.

Dr. Shon Hopkin:             44:03                   That is so true. It is the water that those other texts are swimming in. The Book of Mormon, you read it and you think, oh yeah, this is pretty plain and simple. I’m getting it. And then you study the Old Testament, you’re like, oh, well, there was a lot there I was just missing and taking for granted. And it illuminates that Book of Mormon text. I like to think of Nephi being a litle bit tricky when he says, you know, he glories in simplicity. I’m like, yeah, but you like Isaiah a lot too. What Nephi is doing is he’s giving us second simplicity. He has absorbed the teachings of Isaiah and then he is then sharing, he’s simplifying or making clear and plain what we need to know. It all connects back in ways that become more profound as we study the Old Testament.

Hank Smith:                      44:55                   Yeah. It’s been an eye-opening experience. Both years of Come, Follow Me to go, oh, wow, that makes me see the Kirtland Temple differently, or this helps me see Nephi differently, or King Benjamin. I have another question just to switch back to Kings. Way back in 1 Samuel, the Lord said, this is a bad idea. They came to Samuel and said, give us a king, like all the other nations. And the Lord said, this is not a good idea, and we see it play out. This was not a great idea. The Lord says to Samuel, they don’t want me to reign over them. They have rejected me. They would rather have Saul or David or Solomon than me reigning over them. Shon, just in your experience with these texts, they have a king. Why do this? I almost feel sometimes like Saul, David, and Solomon are victims of this.

Dr. Shon Hopkin:             45:47                   They are proving the point and they do actually. I mean, the things that David does, David’s sins are actually specific things and Solomon’s as well, specific things that Samuel had, that the Lord had warned them about through his prophet, Samuel. And I would say this is so us, is it not? And the Come, Follow Me Manual talks about seeking for kings this solution that the world has to solve my problems and make it all okay. I want to be like other people and I want these sort of temporary solutions. I have mentioned here before a phrase that I learned from someone at some point, there is a hole in our soul and that hole is Christ shaped. We all feel a divine sense of lack or uncertainty or fear that we don’t matter, that we’re insufficient, that we don’t have value. That’s like a hole in our souls everyone desires.

                                           46:54                   Happiness, everyone in this world desires to know that their own life has meaning. We take and we fill that with, well, if I have a king, then I’ll know that we have value, then we’ll be like the other people. Or if I have enough money, if I have enough likes on whatever social media page, then I’ll know. Or we try to mask that we fill this fear with substances or with too much sleep or with binge-watching and none of those things, I mean, some of them are inherently bad. Many of them aren’t inherently bad, but if we try, let’s go even further than that we use other human beings in the place of God, like a king. Oh, when I get married, then I will know that I have value. We persecute like roommates or, you know, my parents are supposed to fill this hole in my soul.

                                           47:46                   And if they don’t do it perfectly, then they’re to blame. And the reality is there’s only one king who will fill our soul fully and the other stuff is good and it actually helps, you know, it sort of fills in those gaps, but God has to be first. And when we try to put our spouse in the place of God, you need to solve my problems. You need to be the source of my happiness. You need to anticipate all my needs and know what’s in my mind and my heart and figure it all out for me. We persecute ourselves, we disappoint ourselves, we set ourselves up for disappointment and we persecute others as well, those that we’ve put in that position. God needs to be the king of my soul. Jesus Christ and his Father need to be sovereign in my soul and then all of my relationships will be stronger because of that. And then all that is good can flow. May we put first the kingdom of God and then all other things can flow in ways that will not self-sabotage. Your question is spot on, Hank, and a really insightful one. Thank you for asking it.

Hank Smith:                      48:56                   So sad, but like you said, so us.

John Bytheway:               49:00                   And when have you felt that? I mean, no place like the temple for feeling that void filled. That’s a really good place to have that void filled. So I love that idea and all the other things we try to make fit in that void and they, nope, that’s not it. Nope, that’s not it. Don’t, that’s not it.

Dr. Shon Hopkin:             49:23                   Yeah. Ice cream- It’s going to undermine you in the end, you know? Yeah. Doritos, that’ll fill this hole… No, that’s not going to. Chocolate, maybe, maybe better. For a minute.

John Bytheway:               49:35                   Certain brands.

Dr. Shon Hopkin:             49:36                   We are setting up our own future sorrow if we sort of over-rely on those as the solution to our challenges.

Hank Smith:                      49:45                   Yeah, we do it with celebrities, athletes.

Dr. Shon Hopkin:             49:47                   Oh, so painful when that happens, isn’t it? When we’ve put a sports team in that spot and their success, that doesn’t last very long, does it? Yeah.

John Bytheway:               49:57                   What do you say, Hank? Your girlfriends and the cougars will break your heart. What is that that you say?

Hank Smith:                      50:01                   Yeah. It’s the birds and the bees and the Jazz will break your heart. Those are the two lessons you get when you turn 12 in our house.

John Bytheway:               50:10                   A revelation to Martin Harris. You’ve got a hole, Martin. Learn of me. Listen to my words, walk in the meekness of my spirit, and you will have peace in. Think of all the things you could think that might bring you peace. No, you’ll have peace in me. That’s the thing that’s going to fit in that hole in your heart.

Hank Smith:                      50:31                   That leads me to my second question, which is, Shon, you’ve tried to articulate something to us and I think you’ve done a really good job. Even though they choose some kings over the Lord, he doesn’t leave them.

John Bytheway:               50:41                   Which is nice of him.

Hank Smith:                      50:42                   The Bible could be over in 1 Samuel 8.

John Bytheway:               50:45                   He’s like, I’ve had it with you people.

Hank Smith:                      50:46                   Fine. You’re on your own.

Dr. Shon Hopkin:             50:48                   Rejected me. You picked that guy. Go have him then.

Hank Smith:                      50:51                   Go do your thing and I will, I’ll wait for you to come back. But here he is walking with them in their poor choices. Is that not us as well?

Dr. Shon Hopkin:             51:00                   I think that is spot on again and it reminds me that in Solomon’s prayer, he’s going to talk towards the end about God’s covenant and mercy. So in 1 Kings 8:13, Solomon says, Lord God of Israel, there is no God like thee in heaven above or on earth beneath who keepest covenant and mercy, covenant and mercy with thy servants that walk before thee with all their heart. Well, so covenant is brit. That’s the word that is consistently translated as covenant. Mercy is that other word that President Nelson and others have worked to teach us that is hesed. You’re going to have hesed with your covenant people. And what that means is that God puts himself in the position of the steady one. He’s the one who’s waiting at the window for us. He’s the one who doesn’t move. We move all over the place and he says, I’m staying put.

                                           52:06                   You’re going to have to repent and return to me, but I’m here. I’m here for you. So you picked someone else over me. That’s going to lead you to sorrow. That’s unfortunate. I will be here to heal you. And there’s this beautiful verse in Isaiah where he says, and he’ll wipe away all tears from their eyes, tears from off their faces and all faces. And I just picture God’s gentle, powerful hands cupping my face or a little child’s face and gently wiping those tears away. I’m the one that gives you joy. He’s jealous. He’s a jealous God, not because he cares that someone else is getting our attention. It’s because he cares about us. He has power to heal us. We all know we’ve had pain in our lives. We tried to seek after the wrong thing to fill the hole in our souls. He’s the God that has covenant and hesed and mercy.

Hank Smith:                      53:03                   I don’t hear him often saying, I told you so.

Dr. Shon Hopkin:             53:07                   Yeah.

John Bytheway:               53:09                   I like the statement in the Book of Mormon and they said that what did Mahonri say? Surely this leadeth to captivity, right?

Hank Smith:                      53:18                   Shon, look at all these imperfect people. Some of them really these are serious flaws connecting with God. They’re reaching towards him and he is reaching back in hesed, like you said, he’s so kind.

Dr. Shon Hopkin:             53:34                   The much differently than is the common conception of the God of the Hebrew Bible or the God of the Old Testament. And you see it in Isaiah. You never get a moment where God expresses, hey, I’m going to forgive those who don’t repent. You don’t get those moments. But what you do get is there’s never a moment where he says, if you repent, I’m not going to forgive you. I will be there for you. And you see it play out. These people, sort of like all of us today, they’re a bit of a hot mess. God stays the course. That’s the God of the Old Testament. That’s the God of the Hebrew Bible and he manifests himself a Jehovah is Christ, but the Father manifests who he is and how he feels about us in New Testament times when Jesus descends. He is the same being who is still there walking the path with us and for us.

Hank Smith:                      54:37                   Thanks, Shon. This has been a fantastic day. It always is with Shon Hopkin.

John Bytheway:               54:42                   Yeah. We should have him on again.

Dr. Shon Hopkin:             54:45                   Well, I enjoy every time you explore the Old Testament and the other scriptures with someone. I’m like, ooh, that was spectacular. There was, there were some really beautiful, powerful, applicable insights there. I’m really grateful to be a small part of that.

Hank Smith:                      55:00                   Thank you. Thank Jennifer for us for letting us steal you away for a little while. With that, we want to thank Dr. Shon Hopkin for joining us today. We want to thank our executive producer, Shannon Sorensen. Thank you, Shannon. We want to thank our sponsors, David and Verla Sorensen in every episode. We remember our founder, Steve Sorensen. We hope you’ll join us next week. We’re going to keep going through the Old Testament on followHIM. As a thank you to our wonderful listeners, we’d love to gift you the digital version of our book, Finding Jesus Christ in the Old Testament. It offers short, meaningful insights drawn from our past Old Testament episodes. Visit followhim.co, that’s followhim.co to download your free copy today and you’ll also find the link to purchase the print edition. Thank you for being part of our follow him family. Of course, none of this could happen without our incredible production crew. David Perry, Lisa Spice, Will Stoughton, Krystal Roberts, Ariel Cuadra, Heather Barlow, Amelia Kabwika, Sydney Smith, and Annabelle Sorensen.