John Calvin Commentary Hebrews 9:2

"For there was a tabernacle prepared, the first, wherein [were] the candlestick, and the table, and the showbread; which is called the Holy place." — Hebrews 9:2 (ASV)

For there was a tabernacle, etc. As the Apostle here touches only lightly on the structure of the tabernacle, so that he might not be detained beyond what his subject required, so I will also intentionally abstain from any refined explanation of it. It is therefore sufficient for our present purpose to consider the tabernacle in its three parts: the first was the court of the people; the middle was commonly called the sanctuary; and the last was the inner sanctuary, which they called, preeminently, the holy of holies.

Regarding the first sanctuary, which was adjacent to the court of the people, he says that there were the candlestick and the table on which the shewbread was set; he calls this place, in the plural, the holies. Then, the most secret place is mentioned, which they called the holy of holies, even more remote from the view of the people, and it was even hidden from the priests who ministered in the first sanctuary. For just as a veil closed off the sanctuary to the people, so another veil kept the priests from the holy of holies. There, the Apostle says, was the θυμιατήριον, by which name I understand the altar of incense, or fumigation, rather than the censer; then the ark of the covenant, with its covering, the two cherubim, the golden pot filled with manna, the rod of Aaron, and the two tables. This is as far as the Apostle proceeds in describing the tabernacle.

But he says that the pot in which Moses had deposited the manna, and Aaron’s rod that had budded, were in the ark with the two tables. However, this seems inconsistent with sacred history, which in 1 Kings 8:9, relates that there was nothing in the ark but the two tables. But it is easy to reconcile these two passages: God had commanded the pot and Aaron’s rod to be laid up before the testimony; it is therefore probable that they were deposited in the ark, together with the tables. But when the Temple was built, these things were arranged in a different order, and reliable history relates it as a new development that the ark contained nothing else but the two tables.