Mercy seat

According to the biblical account (Exodus 25:19; 37:6), the cover was made from pure gold and was the same width and breadth as the ark beneath it, 2.5 cubits long and 1.5 cubits wide. Two golden cherubim were placed at each end of the cover facing one another and the mercy seat, with their wings spread to enclose the mercy seat (Exodus 25:18–21). The cherubim formed a seat for Yahweh (1 Samuel 4:4). The ark and mercy seat were kept inside the Holy of Holies, the temple's innermost sanctuary which was separated from the other parts of the temple by a thick curtain (parochet).

The Holy of Holies could be entered only by the high priest on the Day of Atonement. The high priest sprinkled the blood of a sacrificial bull onto the mercy seat as an atonement for the sins of the people of Israel.

After the destruction of the Second Temple, just as the Torah scroll was contained in a Torah ark (Aron Kodesh, "Holy ark") in synagogues so also the term kaporet was applied to the valance of the parochet (Hebrew: פרוכת‎ "curtain") on this ark.[2][3][4]

In the Hellenistic Jewish Septuagint the term was rendered hilasterion ("thing that atones"), following the secondary meaning of the Hebrew root verb "cover" (כָּפַר‎ kaphar) in pi'el and pu'al as "to cover sins," "to atone" found also in kippurim. The term hilasterion is unknown in classical Greek texts and appears to be one of several Jewish Greek coinages found in the Septuagint translation. The Jewish Greek hilasterion was later rendered literally into Latin as propitiatorium in the Christian Latin Vulgate. In Jewish Greek texts the concept of a hilasterion also occurs in Josephus' Antiquities of the Jews 16,7,1 mnema hilasterion ("monument to ask for atonement").[5]

The Septuagint term hilasterion appears twice in the Greek text of the New Testament: Romans 3:25 and Hebrews 9:5; in 1 John 2:2 and 4:10 the word is ἱλασμός, hilasmos. Although the term mercy seat usually appears as the English translation for the Greek term hilasterion in the Epistle to the Hebrews, most translations are usually inconsistent as they instead generally translate hilasterion as propitiation where it occurs in the Epistle to the Romans. The Epistle to the Hebrews recounts the description of the Ark, Holy of Holies, and mercy seat, and then goes on to portray the role of the mercy seat during Yom Kippur as a prefiguration of the Passion of Christ, which concludes was a greater atonement, and formed a New Covenant (Hebrews 9:3-15); the text continues by stating that the Yom Kippur ritual was merely a shadow of things to come (Hebrews 10:1). The continual sacrifice for sin became obsolete once Jesus was crucified. This is the whole thrust of Hebrews ch 10, but is especially clearly stated in v11-14. The Epistle to the Romans states that Jesus was sent by God as a propitiation (Romans 3:25), while, perhaps in a reflection on Ezekiel's atonement ceremony, the Second Epistle to the Corinthians states that Jesus had become a sin offering (2 Corinthians 5:21).

The first English Bible, translated from Latin 1382, renders the term a propiciatory following the Vulgate propitiatorium, and in the first occurrence, Exodus 25:17, also inserts an unbracketed gloss "that is a table hiling the ark" - hiling is Middle English for "covering":[6]

Exodus 25:17 And thou schalt make a propiciatorie of clenneste gold; that is a table hilinge the arke; the lengthe therof schal holde twei cubitis and an half, the broodnesse schal holde a cubit and half. Wycliffe 1382[7]

The term propritiatory was also used by J.M. Powis Smith, a Protestant, in The Complete Bible: An American Translation, published in 1939. The originally Protestant translation "mercy seat" was not followed by Ronald Knox,[8] but has since been largely adopted also by Roman Catholic Bible versions, such as the New Jerusalem Bible (NJB) 1985[9]