Utilizing the spatial theory of Henri Lefebvre, I discuss ways that aspects of the conceived space of the Jerusalem Temple are alternatively developed within the Old Testament through personification. In this dissertation I discuss three personified figures who each take up an aspect or element of this conceived space. Each of the figures studied does this in a different way and takes up different aspects associated with the Temple.

Personified Jerusalem appears in Lamentations 1 in the aftermath of the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple at the hands of the Babylonians in 587 BCE. An emphasis on Jerusalem's personified body receiving violence and responding to that violence depicts this personified figure as a substantial representation of the fallen buildings and Temple within Jerusalem.

The personified Servant in Isaiah 52:13-53:12 appears somewhat later than personified Jerusalem in Lamentations 1, still at a time when the Temple does not stand. Identified as YHWH's Servant, this figure personifies Israel's exilic community as it returns to Jerusalem with a divinely-given task for the people of Jerusalem. Through metaphors of one who bears the pain and sins of others and of cultic reparation, the Servant functions within the poem as the means of reparation between Jerusalem and YHWH and between the residents of Jerusalem and the returning exiles.

In Proverbs 1-9 the two personified figures of Woman Wisdom and Woman Folly together offer two alternative ways for the son, or student, of the instructions to follow: to live a good life in accord with Wisdom or to lead a diminished life in accord with Folly. Attention to such boundaries and an ordered creation are also characteristics of Temple ideology, particularly in terms of the Priestly worldview. In this case the personified figures do not replace the Temple so much as function as alternative to the Second Jerusalem Temple.