Shekinah: The Glory That Dwells

Shekinah is a word worth including honestly, and honesty here starts with a correction: shekinah is not a Bible word. You will not find it in the KJV. It was coined later, from the Hebrew root for dwelling, to describe something the Bible describes constantly without ever using this exact term for it.

Pronounced shaw-kan'. noun (post-biblical, from the verb “to dwell”).

Shekinah comes from shakan, “to dwell,” and later Jewish teachers used it to name the visible glory of God’s presence. The word itself never appears in the Bible; the reality it names does.

The root shakan means to reside or stay permanently, and it is the same root behind the tabernacle, the mishkan, God’s dwelling place among His people. When cloud and fire filled the tabernacle and later the temple so thickly that priests could not stand to minister, that visible glory is what later rabbis named shekinah: God not just present in principle but dwelling, visibly, in a specific place.

John reaches for this same idea, without the later word, when he writes that the Word “dwelt among us,” using a Greek verb that literally means “tabernacled.” The glory that once filled a tent and a temple, later Christian readers see arriving in a person. Whether or not you use the word shekinah, the pattern it names, God choosing to dwell visibly with His people, runs from Exodus straight through to Christmas.