Wine at the Boundary

The distinction between sacred and profane is said to be a universal religious structure, but it’s remarkably rare in the Hebrew Bible. Holy things are “profaned” with some frequency (e.g., Exodus 31:14, on profaning the Sabbath) but “profane” as a noun describing a space is use only a handful of times.

Ezekiel condemns the priests for failing to make division between the holy and profane (Ezekiel 22:26), and the massive walls of his visionary temple run between the zones of holy and profane (...