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•CEILING the covering (1 Kings 7:3,7) of the inside roof and walls of a house with planks of wood (2 Chronicles 3:5; Jeremiah 22:14). Ceilings were sometimes adorned with various ornaments in stucco, gold, silver, gems, and ivory. The ceilings of the temple and of Solomon’s palace are described 1 Kings 6:9, 15; 7:3; 2 Chronicles 3:5,9.
•CELLAR a subterranean vault (1 Chronicles 27:28), a storehouse. The word is also used to denote the treasury of the temple (1 Kings 7:51) and of the king (14:26). The Hebrew word is rendered “garner” in Joel 1:17, and “armoury” in Jeremiah 50:25.
•CENCHREA millet, the eastern harbour of Corinth, from which it was distant about 9 miles east, and the outlet for its trade with the Asiatic shores of the Mediterranean. When Paul returned from his second missionary journey to Syria, he sailed from this port (Acts 18:18). In Romans 16:1 he speaks as if there were at the time of his writing that epistle an organized church there. The western harbour of Corinth was Lechaeum, about a mile and a half from the city. It was the channel of its trade with Italy and the west.
•CENSER the vessel in which incense was presented on “the golden altar” before the Lord in the temple (Exodus 30:1-9). The priest filled the censer with live coal from the sacred fire on the altar of burnt-offering, and having carried it into the sanctuary, there threw upon the burning coals the sweet incense (Leviticus 16:12, 13), which sent up a cloud of smoke, filling the apartment with fragrance. The censers in daily use were of brass (Numbers 16:39), and were designated by a different Hebrew name, miktereth (2 Chronicles 26:19; Ezekiel 8:11): while those used on the day of Atonement were of gold, and were denoted by a word (mahtah) meaning “something to take fire with;” LXX. pureion = a fire-pan. Solomon prepared for the temple censers of pure gold (1 Kings 7:50; 2 Chronicles 4:22). The angel in the Apocalypse is represented with a golden censer (Revelation 8:3, 5).
Paul speaks of the golden censer as belonging to the tabernacle (Hebrews 9:4). The Greek word thumiaterion, here rendered “censer,” may more appropriately denote, as in the margin of Revised Version, “the altar of incense.” Paul does not here say that the thumiaterion was in the holiest, for it was in the holy place, but that the holiest had it, i.e., that it belonged to the holiest (1 Kings 6:22). It was intimately connected with the high priest’s service in the holiest.
The manner in which the censer is to be used is described in Numbers 4:14; Leviticus 16:12.