(17) You will bring them and plant them in Your own mountain, The place You made to dwell in, O LORD, The sanctuary, O LORD, which Your hands established. (18) The LORD will reign for ever and ever!
(1) החודש הזה לכם ראש חדשים, “this month shall be for you the beginning of the months, etc.” It is significant that at this juncture God did not instruct Moses and Aaron to relay the content of this message to the Jewish people. Surely the word לכם, “for you,” implied that the fixing of the new moon was a commandment applicable to each and every Israelite! Failure of God to issue the customary instruction: “say to all the Israelites, etc.,” therefore indicated that the determining of the new moon was something reserved for the elders of the people, a court of experts, and was not something incumbent on the individual Jew. This is why these instructions were addressed to both Moses and Aaron in their capacity as the experts at the time. The word לכם, in this instance means: “to the likes of you, to trained experts.”
The word החודש הזה is a reference to the month of Nissan. The Torah calls it ראשון, “the first,” both here and again in verse 18. Seeing that the month of Tishrei is the first month in the compilation of years [something we have in common with the rest of mankind, Ed.] the Torah had to add the word לכם, “for you,” to show that Nissan is unique to the Jewish people as the first in our list of months. The implication is that we count these months as a symbol of the month in which we attained our freedom as a nation. It follows that wherever mention is made of the month of Tishrei, the Torah refers to it as the seventh month. This means it is the seventh following Nissan. Incidentally, this is the reason that the Torah has no names for the various months, but refers to them as a ordinal numbers, i.e. “second,” “third,” etc. By doing so the memory of the redemption from Egypt is constantly invoked when we read about any of the festivals which occur during certain months of the year...
We learn from all this that the Torah itself did not give specific names to the months just as it did not assign specific names to the days of the week as is customary amongst the Gentile nations. We refer to the days of the week by their proximity or otherwise to the Sabbath, i.e. “the first day after Sabbath,” “the second day after Sabbath,” etc. We do this in order to maintain the centrality of the Sabbath in our calendar. This is the plain meaning of Exodus 20,8: “remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.” The Torah demands that we remember the Sabbath on a daily basis.
(7) When the House was built, only finished stones cut at the quarry were used, so that no hammer or ax or any iron tool was heard in the House while it was being built.
(22) And if you make for Me an altar of stones, do not build it of hewn stones; for by wielding your tool upon them you have profaned them.
(21) Place the cover on top of the Ark, after depositing inside the Ark the Pact that I will give you. (22) There I will meet with you, and I will impart to you—from above the cover, from between the two cherubim that are on top of the Ark of the Pact—all that I will command you concerning the Israelite people.
(20) The cherubim shall have their wings spread out above, shielding the cover with their wings. They shall confront each other, the faces of the cherubim being turned toward the cover.
(12) one wing of the other [cherub] 5 cubits long extending to the other wall of the House, and its other wing 5 cubits long touching the wing of the first cherub. (13) The wingspread of these cherubim was thus 20 cubits across, and they were standing up facing the House.
§ Continuing its focus on the cherubs, the Gemara asks: How were the cherubs standing? Rabbi Yoḥanan and Rabbi Elazar disagree about this. One says: Their faces were turned one toward the other. And one says: Their faces were turned toward the House, i.e., the Sanctuary. The Gemara asks: But according to the one who says that their faces were turned one toward the other, isn’t it written: “And their faces were toward the House” (II Chronicles 3:13)? How does he explain the meaning of this verse? The Gemara answers: This is not difficult, as their faces miraculously changed directions in reflection of the Jewish people’s relationship to God. Here, when it states that the cherubs faced each other, it was when the Jewish people do the will of God. There, the verse that describes that the cherubs faced the Sanctuary and not toward each other, was when the Jewish people do not do the will of God. The Gemara asks: And according to the one who says they stood as described in the verse: “And their faces were toward the House,” isn’t it written: “With their faces one toward the other” (Exodus 25:20). How does he explain the meaning of this verse? The Gemara answers: They were angled sideways so that they turned both to each other and toward the Sanctuary, as it is taught in a baraita: Onkelos the Convert said that the cherubs were of the form of children, as the verse states: “And in the Holy of Holies he made two cherubim of the form of children; and they overlaid them with gold” (II Chronicles 3:10), and their faces were angled sideways toward the Ark of the Covenant, like a student taking leave of his teacher.
משום דדריש שכיון שבמקדש שהי' רוחב עשר על שלושים אמה הי' מנורה אחת אם כן על כל החשבון הוא עשר פעמים שלושים הוא שלש מאה אמה וקומתו עשר אמה ולפי זה החשבון ההיכל שבנה שלמה היה ששים על רוחב עשרים א"כ עשרים פעמים ששים הוא אלף ושני מאות וקומתו שלשים א"כ הוא ג' פעמים ככה הוא שלשת אלפים ושש מאות א"כ היה מוכרח להיות אחד עשר מנורות ולבד משה עשרה מנורות חמש מימין של משה וחמש משמאל של משה א"כ לפי החשבון היה צריך להיות עוד אחת רק שלא היה יכול היות יותר על צד אחד מעל הצד השני ובפרט לפרש"י דהדביר היה גובה עשרים א"כ לא היה רק מאה אמה יותר ולכן עשה גם שולחנות עשרה כי השולחן צ"ל נוכח המנורה וכזו כן זה וזה רק במקדש שלמה שהיה גלוי שכינה אבל במקדש שני שאינו רק חוק סגי באחת ודו"ק היטב.
Solomon had ten Menorot because he posited that because the Mikdash, which was 10 amot wide and 30 amot long, had one menorah, the area of his Temple is ten times the area of the Mikdash and so it should have 10 Menorot. The area of the Mikdash was 30 x 10= 300 amot with a height of 10 amot for 3,000 amot.
The Temple that Solomon built was 60 amot by 20 amot, which is an area of 1,200 amot, and the height was 30 amot, so the total area is 36,000 amot. In theory there should have been 11 extra menorot in addition to the main one, but it doesn't make sense to have more on one side than the other so they ended up with 5 on each side.
We then need a table next to each menorah, because they function as a pair, so there were 10 tables to correspond with the ten extra menorot.