In this section, "Symbolism," the author discusses the seven-branched menorah, an ancient Jewish symbol of pure gold that represents the seven days of creation and embodies the Jewish mission to be a light unto the nations. The author highlights the importance of the pattern of sevens throughout the text, including in the seven natural endowments from heaven and the seven aspects of worship in Corinth. The author also notes the significance of the seven species and the number seven in the lists found in Colossians and 2 Peter.

No fortress could protect a light that was itself protected by heaven’s armies of cherubim and seraphim. Through earthquake, storm and fire, the light burned unabated and relentlessly. Invading armies came and went, sometimes carrying off the menorah in exile to distant lands. But had the light failed to burn because of the sweep of empires waxing and waning over the sands of time? Which of the nomadic tribes of horse lords can claim, “I have snuffed out that light”? What new technology employed by the Babylonians, the Persians or the Greeks had that honour? Not even the Romans extinguished that light, not Vespasian, not Titus, nor any heathen army could claim such a victory over the menorah.

But let me answer the question that must surely be in the mind of the astute student of ancient jewish antiquity. “Where now is the menorah taken from Jerusalem by the Roman legionaries?” A fair question dear listener but I fear you are barking up the wrong tree. No need to Google the answer for you will find none. That physical menorah has been lost, or melted down for gold a long time ago. Even if it were to be dug up in the sands of the Levant today, there are somethings that can come only by revelation. You must know that the true secret of the menorah is far less an issue of location than of meaning. The privilege is the representation it projects in the hermeneutic of a certain kind of perspective that reading the gospels brings.

Magdala menorah: Iconography from the 1st century at a town where Jesus may have preached on the shores of the Galilee. The menorah is an iconic ancient Jewish symbol of pure gold and in the likeness of an almond tree. The lampstand’s first appearance in Scripture is in the tabernacle, the portable temple the Israelites traveled with after they left Egypt, older even than the Star of David. The menorah’s seven branches symbolises the seven days of creation and embody the Jewish mission to be a light unto the nations.

The important things is that there was a pattern, a repetition of geometry, based upon the shape of the almond tree found only in the desert in abundance precisely where the Israelites encamped in the wilderness of Midian (see hypothesis of Dr Sung Hak Kim). This was a wilderness familiar to Moses. It was Zipporah and her father Jethro’s home ground and also the vast emptiness where God chose to meet with Moses face to face. It was in the cleft of the rock, Moses learned to recognised the voice of an unseen and therefore invisible Presence and recognise the command and statutes of the Holy One of Israel.

The Cecil B. DeMille Moses in the Desert Narration/10 Commandments