In the book of Genesis, God places Adam in the garden so that he may “work and guard it”—two verbs that the Torah uses repeatedly in describing the duties of the priests in the Tabernacle. Drawing on this and other parallels, Leen Ritmeyer—an expert on the architecture of ancient Jerusalem—argues that the First and Second Temples themselves were modeled on the Garden of Eden. He makes particular use of the Temples’ layout, where one enters from the east and progresses through the outer and inner courtyards, into the Holy (which was generally only entered by priests), and from there to the Holy of Holies (which could be entered by the high priest only on certain occasions) at the westernmost part of the complex:

After Adam and Eve were exiled from the Garden of Eden, cherubim with a flaming sword that turned in all directions were placed to the east of the garden to prevent their return. In Hebrew, the word “placed” (yashken), used in Genesis 3:24, is closely related to the word for Tabernacle, which is mishkan in Hebrew. [The use of this word] appears to indicate that the cherubim were made to dwell in a tent-sanctuary or tabernacle that was erected to the east of the Garden of Eden. Although little else is known about this sanctuary, the text would seem to be describing a proto-Tabernacle [that] would serve as a model for future meeting places between God and man.

The location of the sanctuary at the east side of the garden can be compared to that of the Holy of the later sanctuaries of Israel. The forbidden paradise lay therefore to the west of the guarded entrance to the Garden of Eden. . . . Anyone wanting to visit this dwelling place would have had to approach it from the east and face west. This direction of approaching a holy place from the east has been preserved in the Tabernacle and the Temple constructions, the entrances of which all faced east, while the Holy of Holies is in the west.

The principle of approaching God by sacrifice would also have been established in this place. The [flaming] sword of the cherubim may have been used, not only to preserve the way to the Tree of Life by keeping humans out, but also for killing sacrifices and [using] the flame for igniting the wood.

The cherubim then also serve as a parallel to the images of cherubim beaten into the cover of the ark that sits in the Holy of Holies.

Yesterday, the beepers used by hundreds of Hizballah operatives were detonated. Noah Rothman puts this ingenious attack in the context of the overall war between Israel and the Iran-backed terrorist group:

[W]hile the disabling of an untold number of Hizballah operatives is remarkable, it’s also ominous. This week, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant told reporters that the hour is nearing when Israeli forces will have to confront Iran’s cat’s-paw in southern Lebanon directly, in order to return the tens of thousands of Israelis who fled their homes along Lebanon’s border under fire and have not yet been able to return. Today’s operation may be a prelude to the next phase of Israel’s defensive war, a dangerous one in which the IDF will face off against an enemy with tens of thousands of fighters and over 150,000 rockets and missiles trained on Israeli cities.

Seth Frantzman, meanwhile, focuses on the specific damage the pager bombings have likely done to Hizballah:

This will put the men in hospital for a period of time. Some of them can go back to serving Hizballah, but they will not have access to one of their hands. These will most likely be their dominant hand, meaning the hand they’d also use to hold the trigger of a rifle or push the button to launch a missile.

Hizballah has already lost around 450 fighters in its eleven-month confrontation with Israel. This is a significant loss for the group. While Hizballah can replace losses, it doesn’t have an endlessly deep [supply of recruits]. This is not only because it has to invest in training and security ahead of recruitment, but also because it draws its recruits from a narrow spectrum of Lebanese society.

The overall challenge for Hizballah is not just replacing wounded and dead fighters. The group will be challenged to . . . roll out some other way to communicate with its men. The use of pagers may seem archaic, but Hizballah apparently chose to use this system because it assumed the network could not be penetrated. . . . It will also now be concerned about the penetration of its operational security. When groups like Hizballah are in chaos, they are more vulnerable to making mistakes.