hekhal

This is one word that English has to split in two. It names the great house of a sovereign, and in the world of the Bible a god was thought of as a king who lived in a palace, so the same word covers a human king's residence and the temple of God without strain. It came into Hebrew from an old Sumerian phrase meaning simply "big house," carried in through the Babylonians, and from the start it referred to both royal halls and the houses of the gods. Behind every use sits one idea: a god, like a king, lives in a palace, with a throne, attendants, and an audience hall.

The word ranges across four overlapping pictures, all the same kind of place on different scales. It can mean a human king's palace, the rarer use, found mostly of foreign courts and the lavish residences the prophets condemn. It can mean the temple of God taken as a whole, its most common use, standing for the entire house of the LORD in Jerusalem. It can narrow to the temple's main hall, the long central room between the entrance porch and the innermost room, in the detailed building accounts. And it can lift to God's palace in heaven, the cosmic throne room from which he hears and rules.

These are not separate words but one word seen from different angles. The reason a single term reaches from Ahab's palace to God's heavenly court is that the temple was understood as God's royal residence: the throne was the winged figures over the ark, the footstool was the ark itself, the audience hall was this great room, and the whole drama of the prophets runs on it. Jeremiah attacks people who treated the temple as automatic protection, Isaiah sees God enthroned in it and is undone, and Ezekiel watches the glory leave the building and return to a rebuilt one. A reader who grasps the plain core, the great house of a sovereign, will not be surprised by any occurrence.