According to the

Hebrew Bible The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;"Tanach"
. '' Ark of the Covenant The Ark of the Covenant, also known as the Ark of the Testimony or the Ark of God, was a religious storage chest and relic held to be the most sacred object by the Israelites. Religious tradition describes it as a wooden storage chest decorat ...

, with two

cherubim A cherub (; : cherubim; ''kərūḇ'', pl. ''kərūḇīm'') is one type of supernatural being in the Abrahamic religions. The numerous depictions of cherubim assign to them many different roles, such as protecting the entrance of the Garden o ...

at the ends to cover and create the space in which

Yahweh Yahweh was an Ancient Semitic religion, ancient Semitic deity of Weather god, weather and List of war deities, war in the History of the ancient Levant, ancient Levant, the national god of the kingdoms of Kingdom of Judah, Judah and Kingdom ...

appeared and dwelled. This was connected with the rituals of the Day of Atonement. The term also appears in later Jewish sources, and twice in the

New Testament The New Testament (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus in Christianity, Jesus, as well as events relating to Christianity in the 1st century, first-century Christianit ...

, from where it has significance in

Christian theology Christian theology is the theology – the systematic study of the divine and religion – of Christianity, Christian belief and practice. It concentrates primarily upon the texts of the Old Testament and of the New Testament, as well as on Ch ...

Etymology

The etymology of ''kaporet'' () is unclear. Baruch J. Schwartz in ''The Oxford Dictionary of the Jewish Religion'' states that "some translate simply 'cover'", whilst others posit a different Hebrew or foreign origin.

In Judaism

In the Hebrew Bible

According to the biblical account (; ), the cover was made from pure

gold Gold is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol Au (from Latin ) and atomic number 79. In its pure form, it is a brightness, bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile metal. Chemically, gold is a transition metal ...

and was the same width and breadth as the ark beneath it, 2.5 cubits long and 1.5 cubits wide. Two golden

were placed at each end of the cover facing one another and the mercy seat, with their wings spread to enclose the mercy seat (). The cherubim formed a seat for God (). The ark and mercy seat were kept inside the

Holy of Holies The Holy of Holies ( or ''Kodesh HaKodashim''; also ''hadDəḇīr'', 'the Sanctuary') is a term in the Hebrew Bible that refers to the inner sanctuary of the Tabernacle, where the Shekhinah (God in Judaism, God's presence) appeared. According ...

, the temple's innermost

sanctuary A sanctuary, in its original meaning, is a sacred space, sacred place, such as a shrine, protected by ecclesiastical immunity. By the use of such places as a haven, by extension the term has come to be used for any place of safety. This seconda ...

which was separated from the other parts of the temple by a thick curtain ('' parochet''). The Holy of Holies could be entered only by the high priest on the Day of Atonement. The high priest sprinkled the blood of a sacrificial bull onto the mercy seat as an atonement for the sins of the people of

Israel Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in West Asia. It Borders of Israel, shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the north-east, Jordan to the east, Egypt to the south-west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Isr ...

In rabbinic tradition

After the destruction of the

Second Temple The Second Temple () was the Temple in Jerusalem that replaced Solomon's Temple, which was destroyed during the Siege of Jerusalem (587 BC), Babylonian siege of Jerusalem in 587 BCE. It was constructed around 516 BCE and later enhanced by Herod ...

, just as the

Torah scroll A Sephardic Torah scroll rolled to the first paragraph of the Shema An Ashkenazi Torah scroll rolled to the Decalogue file:Keneseth Eliyahoo Synagogue, Interior, Tora Cases.jpg">Torah cases at Knesset Eliyahoo Synagogue, Mumbai, India ...

was contained in a Torah ark (''Aron HaKodesh'', "Holy ark") in synagogues, so also the term ''kaporet'' was applied to the valance of the ''parochet'' (Hebrew: "curtain") on this ark.

Second Temple era sources

In the Hellenistic Jewish

Septuagint The Septuagint ( ), sometimes referred to as the Greek Old Testament or The Translation of the Seventy (), and abbreviated as LXX, is the earliest extant Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible from the original Biblical Hebrew. The full Greek ...

the term was rendered (ἱλαστήριον, "thing that atones"), following the secondary meaning of the Hebrew

root In vascular plants, the roots are the plant organ, organs of a plant that are modified to provide anchorage for the plant and take in water and nutrients into the plant body, which allows plants to grow taller and faster. They are most often bel ...

verb "cover" ( ) in and as "to cover sins," "to atone" found also in . ''Hilastērion'' is relatively rare in classical Greek and appears largely in late writings to reference a sacrifice to appease the wrath of a deity. The term in the Septuagint was translated in the Latin

Vulgate The Vulgate () is a late-4th-century Bible translations into Latin, Latin translation of the Bible. It is largely the work of Saint Jerome who, in 382, had been commissioned by Pope Damasus I to revise the Gospels used by the Diocese of ...

Bible with the word propitiatorium from which we get our English word propitiation.

In Christian tradition

In the New Testament

''Hilastērion'' is found twice in the New Testament: Romans 3:25 and

Hebrews The Hebrews (; ) were an ancient Semitic-speaking peoples, ancient Semitic-speaking people. Historians mostly consider the Hebrews as synonymous with the Israelites, with the term "Hebrew" denoting an Israelite from the nomadic era, which pre ...

9:5. In the passage in Romans the term is typically translated "propitiation" or "sacrifice of atonement," whereas in the passage in Hebrews the term is typically translated "mercy seat," the traditional term for the gold lid on the

Ark of the Covenant The Ark of the Covenant, also known as the Ark of the Testimony or the Ark of God, was a religious storage chest and relic held to be the most sacred object by the Israelites. Religious tradition describes it as a wooden storage chest decorat ...

. The difference in translation is explained by the different contexts. In Romans the context is the sacrificial death of Christ, whereas in the Hebrew passage the context is a description of the Holy of Holies and its contents. The Epistle to the Hebrews portrays the role of the mercy seat during Yom Kippur Day of Atonement as a prefiguration of the Passion of Christ, which was a greater atonement, and the formation of a

New Covenant The New Covenant () is a biblical interpretation which was originally derived from a Book of Jeremiah#Sections of the Book, phrase which is contained in the Book of Jeremiah (Jeremiah 31:31–34), in the Hebrew Bible (or the Old Testament of the ...

(Hebrews 9:3–15). The Yom Kippur ritual was a ''shadow of things to come'' (Hebrews 10:1). The continual sacrifice for sin under the Mosaic covenant became

obsolete Obsolescence is the process of becoming antiquated, out of date, old-fashioned, no longer in general use, or no longer useful, or the condition of being in such a state. When used in a biological sense, it means imperfect or rudimentary when comp ...

following the once-for-all sacrificial death of Christ.

In English Bibles

The first English Bible, translated from Latin 1382, renders the term a ' following the

, and in the first occurrence, Exodus 25:17, also inserts an unbracketed gloss "that is a table hiling the ark" – ''hiling'' is

Middle English Middle English (abbreviated to ME) is a form of the English language that was spoken after the Norman Conquest of 1066, until the late 15th century. The English language underwent distinct variations and developments following the Old English pe ...

for "covering". The term ''propitiatory'' was also used by J.M. Powis Smith, a Protestant, in ''The Complete Bible: An American Translation'', published in 1939. The originally Protestant translation "mercy seat" was not followed by Ronald Knox, but has since been largely adopted also by

Roman Catholic The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics worldwide as of 2025. It is among the world's oldest and largest international institut ...

Bible versions, such as the New Jerusalem Bible (NJB) 1985.

Footnotes

References

External links

Matthew Henry on Exodus Chapter 25

{{Book of Exodus navbox Tabernacle and Temples in Jerusalem New Testament theology Biblical phrases Hebrew Bible objects Book of Exodus Gold objects Ark of the Covenant Cherubim