dedication: the ceremony that opens something newly built or newly repaired for its use in worship, and the gifts brought to mark it
Every use of this word marks a beginning. Something has just been finished or put back in order, and a ceremony hands it over to the work it was made for. The word says nothing about how the thing was built or how holy it is. It names the day the thing started being used.
What gets dedicated in these texts is always newly completed:
- the altar of the wilderness tent, opened with gifts from the twelve tribal leaders
- the altar of Solomon's temple, opened with a week of feasting
- the rebuilt wall of Jerusalem, opened with two choirs, cymbals, and harps
- a house, named only in the title of Psalm 30
Because the ceremony was largely made of gifts, the word can slide from the day to the things brought on it. In the long summary that closes Numbers 7, the same word introduces an inventory of silver plates, gold dishes, and animals, so the offerings themselves are called the dedication of the altar.
Dedicating is not the same as making something holy. In Numbers 7:1 the tent and its furnishings are first anointed and made holy (קָדַשׁ), and only then do the twelve days of dedication gifts begin. Making holy changes what a thing is; dedication opens it for use. The verb this noun is built on, "to dedicate" (חָנַךְ), works the same way: it is what Solomon and Israel do to the finished temple, and what a man does to a new house before he settles into it.