Hebrews 9:2

made "prepared" or "established." He treats of the Sanctuary in 2 5, and of the Services in 6 10.

the first By this is not meant the Tabernacle in contrast with the Temple, but "the outer chamber(or Holy Place)." It is however true that the writer is thinking exclusively of the Tabernacle of the Wilderness, which was the proper representative of the worship of the Old Covenant. He seems to have regarded the later Temples as deflections from the divine pattern, and he wanted to take all that was Judaic at its best. His description applies to the Tabernacle only. It is doubtful whether the seven-branched candlestick was preserved in the Temple of Solomon; there was certainly no ark or mercy-seat, much less a Shechinah, in the Herodian Temple of this period. When Pompey profanely forced his way into the Holy of Holies he found to his great astonishment nothing whatever(vacua omnia).

was Rather, "is." The whole tabernacle is ideally present to the writer's imagination.

the candlestick Exodus 25:31-39; Exodus 37:17-24. The word would more accurately be rendered "lamp-stand." In Solomon's temple there seem to have been ten (1 Kings 7:49). There was indeed one only in the Herodian temple (1Ma 1:21; 1Ma 4:49; Jos. Antt.xii. 7. § 6, and allusions in the Talmud). It could not however have exactly resembled the famous figure carved on the Arch of Titus (as Josephus hints in a mysterious phrase, Jos. B. J.vii. 5. § 5), for that has marine monsters carved upon its pediment, which would have been a direct violation of the second commandment.

and the table Exodus 25:23-30; Exodus 37:10-16. There were ten such tables of acacia-wood overlaid with gold in Solomon's temple (2 Chronicles 4:8; 2 Chronicles 4:19).

and the shewbread Lit. "the setting forth of the loaves." The Hebrew name for it is "the bread of the face" (i.e. placed before the presence of God), Exodus 25:23-30; Leviticus 24:5-9.

which is called the sanctuary In the O.T. Kodesh, "the Holy Place."