And the house, that is, the temple before it, was forty cubits long.
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Bede
AD 735
We have said that the temple itself before the doors of the oracle was a type of the present church. Hence it was rightly forty cubits long, for this number is often used to signify the present labor of the faithful, just as the number fifty stands for the rest and peace to come. For the number ten contains the precepts, the observance of which leads to life. Likewise the number ten signifies that very eternal life that we desire and for which we live. But the world in which we strive to attain that life is a square. Hence too the psalmist, foreseeing the church that was to be assembled from the nations said, “He has gathered them out of the countries from the rising and from the setting of the sun, from the north and from the sea.” Now ten multiplied by four makes forty. Hence the people liberated from Egypt as a figure of the present church were subjected to many hardships for forty years in the desert, but at the same time they were also regaled with heavenly bread, and in this way they finally reached the land promised them of old. They were subjected to trials for forty years in order to draw attention to the hardships with which the church contends throughout the whole world in observing the law of God; they were fed on manna from heaven for those forty years to demonstrate that the very sufferings that the church endures in the hope of the heavenly denarius, that is, of eternal happiness, are to be alleviated when those “who now hunger and thirst for righteousness will have their fill,” and as the same church sings to its Redeemer, “But as for me, I will appear before your sight in righteousness; I shall be satisfied when your glory shall appear.” In the same way then the people of God is both subjected to adversities and regaled with manna to confirm the saying of the apostle: “Rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation.” In this figure too our Lord fasted forty days before his bodily death and feasted forty more with his disciples after his bodily resurrection “appearing to them by many proofs and speaking of the kingdom of God, and eating together with them.” For by fasting he showed in himself our toil, but by eating and drinking with his disciples he showed his consolation in our midst. While he was fasting he was crying out, as it were, “Take heed lest perhaps your hearts be weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the cares of this life,” whereas while he was eating and drinking he was crying out, as it were, “Behold, I am with you all days even to the consummation of the world”; and “But I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no one shall take from you.” For as soon as we set our feet on the way of the Lord we both fast from the vanity of the present world and are cheered with the promise of the world to come, not setting our heart on the life here below but feeding our heart on the life up there.
