Coronation Temple Imagery

The coronation of kings and queens establishes a pattern connected with temple worship. This scriptural typology occurs primarily in the Bible and Book of Mormon, but can be found in the Doctrine and Covenants and Pearl of Great Price as well. I will focus mainly on the coronation of Solomon and the background of his rise to the throne. This royal ceremony is loaded with symbolism and relates to a miracle performed by the Savior. It also has ties to modern gospel ordinances and highlights the application of such ordinances. Also, the roles of kings and priests foreshadow Christ's mission as King of kings.

Kings and Priests

The cast of characters becomes paramount here. In the case of Solomon there was a priest named Zadok who would anoint the new king. Thus, we have kings and priests (and queens and priestesses) present. The account in First Kings is significant.

"And Zadok the priest took an horn of oil out of the tabernacle, and anointed Solomon. And they blew the trumpet; and all the people said, God save king Solomon" (1 Kings 1:39).

The horn in the above verse would be the horn of an ox, goat, or ram. Horns in this context would symbolize power, and this could be divine power from the Lamb of God. On the first day of the seventh month (Tishri) there was a memorial blowing of a trumpet, or ram's horn, to celebrate the beginning of the new year and the most sacred month (see Leviticus 23:24). This day is still celebrated among Jews and can be found on the calendar as Rosh Hashanah. One such Rosh Hashanah occurred on September 22, 1827--the day Moroni delivered the plates to Joseph Smith. This was a symbolic announcement of a new year, or new dispensation, being ushered in and its resultant good news of the restored gospel. Moroni can still be seen atop the temples blowing the trumpet, and such a trumpet blowing took place in the above verse at Solomon's coronation.

The horn of oil was taken from the tabernacle, which was a forerunner to Solomon's Temple. So we have a king being anointed with oil as a royal type of Christ. The titles Messiah and Christ both mean "anointed One." The Hebrew word for oil in this verse is shemen. It can be recognized in the name Gethsemane in its Greek form, and is derived from two Hebrew words, gath and shemen, combined to create Gethsemane, or "oil press."

The purest oil ever produced was infinitely expensive and literally squeezed from every pore of our Savior's body in Gethsemane!

Triumphal Entry

In this chapter of First Kings we also read:

"So Zadok the priest, and Nathan the prophet, and Benaiah the son of Jehoiada, and the Cherethites, and the Pelethites, went down, and caused Solomon to ride upon king David’s mule, and brought him to Gihon" (1 Kings 1:38).

Solomon rides a mule foreshadowing the Savior's triumphal entry into Jerusalem. When Jesus rode into Jerusalem the people "took branches of palm trees, and went forth to meet him, and cried, Hosanna: Blessed is the King of Israel that cometh in the name of the Lord. And Jesus, when he had found a young ass, sat thereon; as it is written, Fear not, daughter of Sion: behold, thy King cometh, sitting on an ass’s colt" (John 12:13-15).

The word "Hosanna" used in the Hosanna shout means "save now." At the coronation the people are shouting, "God save king Solomon." At the dedication of the Kirtland Temple, part of the dedicatory prayer was, "That our garments may be pure, that we may be clothed upon with robes of righteousness, with palms in our hands, and crowns of glory upon our heads, and reap eternal joy for all our sufferings" (D&C 109:76). The palms would be waved before the King, and a crown would be part of the royal apparel.

Washing and Anointing

Solomon was anointed to become king at the Gihon Spring (1 Kings 1:45). Later, Hezekiah would divert this flowing "well of water" (John 4:14) into a tunnel and it would flow into the Pool of Siloam within the city walls. The Gihon Spring and the Pool of Siloam were situated very close to the temple, just to the south. This is the site where Jesus heals a blind man. The Gospel of John records:

"When he had thus spoken, he spat on the ground, and made clay of the spittle, and he anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay,

"And said unto him, Go, wash in the pool of Siloam, (which is by interpretation, Sent.) He went his way therefore, and washed, and came seeing" (John 9:6-7).

At this scene we have both a washing and an anointing. Sometimes the mundane things of this world can muddy our eyes, which see only an earthy, clay-like existence. But gospel ordinances can allow us to "come away seeing" the things of eternity!

It should be noted here that the Greek word for Sent (in the above verse) is apostello, where we get the English word apostle. Thus, this pool is a symbolic collection of apostalic keys and ordinances. When we immerse ourselves in the Atonement of Jesus Christ, these ordinances allow us to wash away the muddy and mundane and see ourselves clearly the way Jesus sees each of us.

Interestingly, when Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery received the Aaronic Priesthood and were baptized, Joseph records the following:

"Immediately on our coming up out of the water after we had been baptized, we experienced great and glorious blessings from our Heavenly Father. No sooner had I baptized Oliver Cowdery, than the Holy Ghost fell upon him, and he stood up and prophesied many things which should shortly come to pass. And again, so soon as I had been baptized by him, I also had the spirit of prophecy, when, standing up, I prophesied concerning the rise of this Church, and many other things connected with the Church, and this generation of the children of men. We were filled with the Holy Ghost, and rejoiced in the God of our salvation.

"Our minds being now enlightened, we began to have the scriptures laid open to our understandings, and the true meaning and intention of their more mysterious passages revealed unto us in a manner which we never could attain to previously, nor ever before had thought of" (Joseph Smith--History 1:73-74).