Inner, not Outer Rightness
12 Also the Levites which were the singers, all of them … , with their sons and their brethren, being arrayed in white linen, having cymbals and psalteries and harps, stood at the east end of the altar, and with them an hundred and twenty priests sounding with trumpets …
13 It came even to pass … that then the house was filled with a cloud, even the house of the LORD;
14 So that the priests could not stand to minister by reason of the cloud: for the glory of the LORD had filled the house of God.
~ 2 Chronicles 5: 12-14
that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them
~ John 17: 26
The Levites sang in purest linen, white.
The priests, “an hundred” and yet “twenty” more
Played trumpet music, making air ignite
With gleaming sound. But then a glory bore
Down, mist of sacredness, in smoke this scene,
All secret in this whiter white. The pure
Became more pure, more pure than eyes have seen
Since then, so pure that mist made priests obscure
In linen cleanliness and notes. The cloud
Was white with glorious splendor sent to hide
Pathetic linen on the priestly crowd
Because of what a box withheld inside
The trembling temple, tablets made of stone,
A sanctity that notes could not intone.
~ Phillip Whidden