“Home can literally become a house of glory. Memories of early childhood can become significant in our daily lives…. My brothers and sisters, if you will make your home a house of prayer and fasting, faith, learning and glory, and order, it can become a house of God. If you build your homes on the foundation rock of our Redeemer and the gospel, they can be sanctuaries where your families can be sheltered from the raging storms of life.” (Wirthlin, Joseph B “Spiritually Strong Homes and Families.” Ensign May 1993)

The Bible Dictionary tells us, “A temple is literally a house of the Lord, a holy sanctuary…  A place where the Lord may come, it is the most holy of any place of worship on the earth.  Only the home can compare with the temple in sacredness.”

In light of these two thoughts on the temple and the home, it is very interesting to consider the Hebrew origin of the words translated as “temple” in the King James Bible. Essentially there are two:

בֵּית (bêth) meaning home or temple

and

הֵיכַל (hêkhal) meaning palace or temple

Translation is an art, and one reason there is such a diverse multitude of Bible versions is because the underlying text can be translated into English in so many ways, from literal to interpretive. The take home message here however is the word temple can also mean home or palace. The house of the Lord. The palace of the Lord. The temple of the Lord.

A humble house, or a spacious palace, can be a temple. This idea is innately understood and reflected in the “Castle Doctrine,” established as English common law in 1628; “For a man’s house is his castle, et domus sua cuique est tutissimum refugium [and each man’s home is his safest refuge].” (Coke, Sir Edward. The Institutes of the Laws of England, 1628)

Indeed, one’s house is a castle, a palace, a refuge from the world, even a temple. A home can be a temple, and a temple can be a home. Upon arriving in the Salt Lake Valley, Zion, Brigham Young famously stuck his cane in the ground at Temple Square and said, “Here we will build a temple to our God.”

Temples now are beginning to dot the earth. LDS church members are going to the house of the Lord in greater numbers. The bar is being raised, and now thousands of temple workers, nursing fathers and nursing mothers (Isaiah 49:22-23, 1 Nephi 21:22-23, and 2 Nephi 6:6-7) are scattered throughout  the nations of the world in preparation for the second coming of the Son of God.

Let us establish Zion in our own homes, stick our canes in the ground, raise our proverbial Eben-ezer, and say, “Here we will build a temple.”

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1 Kings 8:10  And it came to pass, when the priests were come out of the holy place, that the cloud filled the house of the LORD,
אֶת־
בֵּית  the house of
יְהוָה ׃  the LORD,
11  So that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud: for the glory of the LORD had filled the house of the LORD.
אֶת־
בֵּית  the house of
יְהוָה ׃  the LORD,

Psalms 11:4  The LORD is in his holy temple, the LORD’s throne is in heaven:
יְהוָה  The LORD
is
בְּ\הֵיכַל  in his temple,

Psalms 27:4  One thing have I desired of the LORD, that will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the LORD, and to enquire in his temple.
5  For in the time of trouble he shall hide me in his pavilion: in the secret of his tabernacle shall he hide me; he shall set me up upon a rock.
בְּ\בֵית־  in the house of
יְהוָה  the LORD
כָּל־  all
יְמֵי  the days of
חַיּ/ַי  my life,
לַ\חֲזוֹת  to behold
בְּ\נֹעַם־  the beauty of
יְהוָה  the LORD,
וּ\לְ\בַקֵּר  and to enquire
OR: contemplate.
בְּ\הֵיכָל/וֹ ׃  in his temple.

Zech 6:15  And they that are far off shall come and build in the temple of the LORD, and ye shall know that the LORD of hosts hath sent me unto you.  And this shall come to pass, if ye will diligently obey the voice of the LORD your God.
בְּ\הֵיכַל  in the temple of
יְהוָה  the LORD,