Essentials of Exodus - Lesson 6

Well, the Tabernacle is the next passage that we want to talk about, and it's a great place to kind of conclude our introduction to the Book of Exodus, because the second half of the book really focuses heavily on the Tabernacle. And if you've ever tried to read through these chapters, you might have found them tedious, because there's a lot of details about materials and building, and there's a lot of pieces of furniture that we've never seen and are never going to see. And so you might wonder, why do we need to care about this? Well, when you slow down and pay close attention, there's so much going on in the Tabernacle Instructions.

I'm going to try to give you a hint, a taste of some of these things. First of all, one cool thing about the structure of the Tabernacle Instructions from 25 to 31, these seven chapters, there are seven speeches. So it's styled as seven speeches that God gives to Moses.

And the last speech, as we already looked at, is about the Sabbath. So the seventh of seven speeches is about the Sabbath. And if we pick things up at the end of chapter 24, verse 15, it says, When Moses went up on the mountain, the cloud covered it, and the glory of Yahweh settled on Mount Sinai.

For six days, the cloud covered the mountain, and on the seventh day, Yahweh called to Moses from within the cloud. So the speaking begins on day seven, and there are seven speeches, the seventh of which is about the Sabbath. It doesn't seem accidental.

To the Israelites, the glory of Yahweh looked like a consuming fire on top of the mountain. But of course, Moses is not consumed by it, even though he enters the cloud. He's like the bush that has the presence of God on him without being consumed.

Moses entered the cloud as he went up on the mountain, and he stayed on the mountain 40 days and 40 nights. So we have lots of biblical symbolism here with numbers. 40 days is usually a time of testing, and they're going to end up spending 40 years in the wilderness.

There were 40 days as part of the Noah's flood. So it's interesting to see these typical numbers. The instructions cluster around a couple of really important objects.

So the two objects, the two items that receive the most attention and that get the most verbs even, like in the way that they're being told, there's like a repetitive nature with lots of verbs, are the Ark of the Covenant and the Breastpiece of the High Priest. These are like the two concentrated hotspots, the nexus of what God is up to. The Ark of the Covenant is the most expensive object, and it goes in the most holy place of the tabernacle, and it symbolizes the very presence of God.

The Breastpiece of the High Priest is Aaron's most expensive piece of clothing, and he is the only one who is allowed to come in and see the Ark of the Covenant, though he's not wearing the breastpiece on the day that he does that. So he symbolizes the glory of God's presence outside the tabernacle, and then he brings the people or represents the people into the most holy presence of God by wearing just plain linen on the Day of Atonement. The two objects, their importance can hardly be overstated.

Aaron cannot do his job without his clothing. The clothes make the man, literally. They constitute his role, and it's not like you can just volunteer to be the High Priest.

God selects him. He then is dressed by Moses and put into this role, and the clothes that he wears are the most expensive clothes that any Israelite will wear. There's even a rule that the average Israelite cannot wear clothing woven of two kinds of material, and I think that's to protect the sacredness of Aaron's clothing, because he does wear clothing woven of two kinds of material.

He has linen. He has a linen tunic underneath. Actually, here are his different garments.

He has a linen tunic made of fine Egyptian linen, and it says that it's twisted, and probably there's a kind of woven or checkered pattern to the linen. It's like really high quality. It's not just your run-of-the-mill linen, and then over top of that he has a blue robe.

Blue dye was the most expensive dye known to the ancient world, and there are actually examples of wars that were fought over the recipe for the blue dye and over the production of blue dye. Sometimes this is translated as purple, but there's been some recent discoveries, and by recent I mean in the past 10 years, they've actually been able to recreate the dye from the secretions of the Murex shells on the Phoenician coast, and they now know that if you're producing it in daylight outdoors, as they would have, that it makes a kind of sky blue color, and so his robe would have been a kind of sky blue, and only kings wear this color in other cultures, and so to have that wool, it would have been made of wool because wool is easier to dye than linen, and then his apron is mixed with linen threads and dyed threads, which would have been woolen, and the dyed threads are blue and purple and red, so these are the two different ways to process Murex shells secretions. You can get a blue or a purple if you do it indoors or have additives, and then red is from a certain kind of worm that eats, that grows on plants or lives on plants, and you can find these worms and crush them and do a process to them, and it turns fabric red, so it's like red, purple, and blue threads that are woven together with the white linen, and they hammer sheets of gold and slice it into threads and actually weave gold thread into his apron, so it's heavy and it's really expensive, and then on top of that, he has this pouch with 12 gemstones on it.

The 12 fun fact is that turquoise is one of the stones, and turquoise was mined in the Sinai Peninsula, and the production of turquoise stopped at a certain point in history, like right after this. They stopped mining turquoise. It had to do with the demise of Egypt.

They shut down the mines, and then it was really hard to find it for hundreds and hundreds of years, so again, if you're making this story up 800 years later, you're probably not putting turquoise on the high priest's breast piece. He had on a turban on his head with this gold medallion that says holy belonging to Yahweh. He's wearing underwear, linen underwear.

I showed you earlier King Tut's underwear. Maybe it was the same type of like linen kind of thong that you tie together, gird up your loins, and put all together, he would have been quite a statement, made quite a statement. This clothing is like, I like to describe it as an inside-out tabernacle, because if you're in the tabernacle, it's white curtains on the outside, and then as you go into the holier and holier spaces, you get more elaborate fabric.

Textiles become more colorful, and they end up having designs in it until you get to the Ark of the Covenant, and Aaron's the other way around. You see his lavish stuff on the outside, and he's got the white underneath, so he's kind of like an inside-out tabernacle. Here's a floor plan of the tabernacle so that we can kind of see how it works.

It is twice as long as it is wide, and the tent, the tabernacle itself, the tent where God supposedly dwells, although he also dwells in heaven, is also, it's three times as long as it is wide, and it's made up of these two sections. So there's a 10 by 10 cubit section that's the most holy place, and then a 20 by 10 cubit section that has the table of offerings, the lamp stand, and the incense altar. And then from there, you go into the courtyard, and we don't know exactly where the bronze altar and the bronze wash basin were placed, but perhaps they were right there in the center.

Perhaps the altar then becomes the counterpart of the Ark of the Covenant that's in the most holy place. There's lots of things we could talk about in terms of the materials that they used for it, but one thing to know is that we go from white linen on the outside to, as I mentioned, colored fabrics on the inside. So let me show you the next slide so we can actually get it visually.

The gateway into the tabernacle is made from multi-colored woven fabric without any designs in it. There's some, there's like three levels of workmanship for the textiles, and there's like a specific Hebrew word for each of these levels. And the outer, so it's just like regular linen on the outside, but then the first gate is multi-colored weave.

And then as you get closer in, you get multi-colored weave with designs, and that could either be woven with like cherubim are just part of the design of the weave, or it could be cherubim embroidered onto it later. But you, we get more and more higher quality as we go in. The same is true with the metals.

So on the outside, like the bases for the posts that hold up the outer curtains are bronze or copper, and in the next level they're silver, and in the center things are gold, like plated in gold. So you have a gradual progression from copper to silver to gold. One thing I learned recently is that the gold of, so ancient people thought of gold as being divinely created, and let me get this right, bronze as being humanly created.

So because there's like a chemical process to make copper or to make bronze, it's not quite clear which of these this is for them. They would just go mining and they would find gold, so God made it, but they would do this process, like chemical process to make copper. So it's like the human attempt to make gold.

It's not quite as good as God's attempt to make gold. So that's why you end up with copper on the outside and gold on the inside as you're getting closer to the presence of God. And you even find this on the individual items.

So like the table is made of pure gold, but then it has a border around the outside, which is probably like a curved cornice that's just sticking out, that's like a flange around the table, and that is made out of gold. And it doesn't say it's pure gold, so probably it's alloyed gold, like gold plus copper, because it's representing the boundary between divine and human realm. So there's symbolism even just in each of the materials all the way through.

It's fascinating to see. The wood that is used for the tabernacle is acacia wood, and acacia wood is apparently quite dense and durable, so that's good. Some people think that the burning bush was made of acacia because it actually holds its shape as it's burning, and so that's why it burned without burning up.

I don't know. But here's what I do know. In the time of the exodus, at the time of the exodus, the Sinai Peninsula was covered with acacia trees.

So if you go there now, like nothing's growing. But in the time of the exodus, there were lots of acacia trees and not other kinds of trees. Acacia was not highly valued across the ancient world, so if you were making up this story 600, 800 years later, no doubt you would use cedars of Lebanon to do the building, not acacia wood.

The fact that it's made of acacia, which is sort of poorly valued later in history, is even more evidence that this really is what happened, that they really built it out of acacia wood because this is what they had. Over top of the sanctuary, there are two other layers of leather. So you maybe have heard some discussion about this.

So in chapter 26, verse 14, there's just one verse that gives us two extra layers. So there's first a linen layer for the tent curtains, like of the actual tent, and the colored threads. So it's like the high quality workmanship.

And over that is a goat hair curtain. And this I take to be like goat hairs that have been spun into yarn, that yarn has been woven into a thing, not actually like goat leather, because if it was goat leather, they wouldn't give the dimensions the way that they're giving it here. Like it's actually the width of a loom, and they're giving us the length of it and not saying to tie them together.

But verse 14 says, make for the tent a covering of ram skins dyed red, and over that a covering of the other durable leather. This is the NIV's way of just being like, we don't know what kind of leather this is. But if you go back to different translations, you'll find that some say this is unicorn skin, badger skin, dolphin skin, or dugong, which is a kind of sea cow, fine Egyptian tanned leather.

Like nobody really knows what tahash is. And there's been lots of ideas. Somebody has suggested that it's beaded leather, or that it's leather that's yellow, or whatever.

My own impulse is to say that this is probably Egyptian tanned leather. I showed you in my favorite tomb, the tomb of Rekmere, where we have all the different industries, there's one that shows all the way of tanning leather. And I think probably there's some Egyptian style that this is mimicking, like you're going to put the fine Egyptian leather on the top to keep everything dry.

But it is possible that it's some kind of sea creature, because they've just come past, you know, you've got the Red Sea, the arms of what we call the Red Sea, the Gulf of Suez, and the Gulf of Aqaba. And there are dolphins and sea cows in here. And apparently, Bedouins made sandals out of the leather of sea cows.

This was common to do. We have no evidence of them making tents out of leather from sea cows. So this would be a unique occurrence of that if it was.

But you can see sort of, kind of through history, people trying to make sense of it. This is the challenge of trying to figure out what ancient people were saying when they're writing a very technical text that includes so many different facets of ancient designs, like embroidery or weaving technique, woodworking, metalworking, gem cutting, like there's so many different aspects of ancient industries that we don't have access to. All of like hooks and bars and, you know, ropes or bands, it's really hard to know exactly what they're saying.

But it is fun to try to draw it out and figure out how it all was put together. Dr. Gary Anderson from Notre Dame wrote a book called That I May Dwell Among Them that I read recently. And he pays attention to the density of verbs being used.

And he notes that literally, even the things that are most important get the most verbs. And you shall make, and you shall make, and you shall make, and you shall make, and you shall make. You get like the full version.

And then when it gets to like the outer courtyard, you get hardly any verbs. It's like one. And you shall make the curtains and do it this way and and this kind of curtain and that kind of curtain and this kind of post and that kind of post.

And it doesn't repeat the verb over and over again. So it's a way of saying, okay, we're getting to the less important stuff. I don't need to stop and slow down and emphasize every verb.

Really, really interesting. They build it in a different order than what the instructions come to them. So they get their instructions from the inside out, that the ark first, and then the table and lampstand, and then the tent it goes in, and they kind of work their way out to the courtyard.

But when they actually build it, they build it from the outside in, so that they have a place to put the precious things when they get there. And maybe a good place to land would be with the two men that God raises up to oversee the work, Bezalel and Oholiab. They're chosen by God, filled with the Spirit of God, with wisdom and understanding, knowledge, and all kinds of skills to do all these things.

They know woodcraft and textiles and gem cutting. And perhaps they were apprentices to someone in Egypt. And so they understand furniture making and they have these skills and they can bring those skills to bear on this work that God's Spirit is now inspiring them to do.

They are the first people in the Bible who are said to be filled with the Spirit of God. And they are not preachers. They are artists, and their artistic designs are essential to upholding the glory of God and the glory that's going to dwell in the midst of the people.

So maybe we can just tack on here at the end a few words about their experience of God's glory now that the tabernacle is built. So they build this place where they're going to meet with God. The design matters.

It's a way of setting apart sacred space, just like Sabbath is setting apart sacred time. So Sabbath is to time what the tabernacle is to space. It's saying, this isn't just a regular spot.

This is a place where God is going to meet with us. And after they put it all up, the presence of God comes down. The glory is evident in the tabernacle.

And the purpose is so that they can meet with God. This is resolving, this tabernacle is resolving a very long-term problem because God communed with humans in the garden. He walked with them in the garden.

And after Adam and Eve were kicked out of the garden, there was a sense of alienation and distance from God. But that becomes resolved in these chapters where God tells them, here's why you're doing this so that I can dwell among you. In chapter 29, verse 42, it says, there I will meet you and speak to you.

There also, I will meet with the Israelites and the place will be consecrated by my glory. So I will consecrate the tent of meeting and the altar and will consecrate Aaron and his sons to serve me as priests. Then I will dwell among the Israelites and be their God.

They will know that I am Yahweh, their God, who brought them out of Egypt so that I might dwell among them. I am Yahweh, their God. So the whole purpose of building this, it's not just like we're showing off to the other nations or we're trying to keep ourselves from going crazy in the desert.

This is the whole purpose of setting the people free is so that God could dwell among them again, the way he did in the garden. And that is the, that is going to be their experience going forward is having God in the neighborhood. Moses, before they actually build the tabernacle, goes back up on Mount Sinai and he enters into the Lord's presence in chapter 34.

When he comes down from Mount Sinai, holding the two stone tablets of the covenant law in his hands, it says he wasn't aware that his face was radiant because he had spoken with Yahweh. He's just been basking in the Lord's presence and his face glows as a result because he's been in God's presence. He's been close to God's glory.

And when they all saw that his face was radiant, they were afraid to come near him, but Moses calls them over. And so they come and he speaks to them and he gives them all the commands God gave him on Mount Sinai. And then he puts a veil over his face because he just doesn't want to freak people out all the time.

It's just gets a little awkward. So he, he puts on a veil, but this face to face communion that Moses has with God is the most intimate kind of communion that we see from anyone in the old Testament in the presence of God. Now it says later in the old Testament that no one can see God's face and live.

So how is it that Moses is speaking with God face to face if no one can see his face and live? Probably what we're dealing with here is a metaphor. To talk with God face to face is a way of saying they're in intimate communion. And it's perhaps evoking this scene that is repeated in the internal parts of Egypt's temples where Pharaoh and the gods are like almost nose to nose close to each other, communing with, with one another.

But the reality is when Moses encounters God, I was like, you can't handle seeing my actual face. So let me cover over this rock and pass by and then I'll let you see my backside. Whatever that means.

I don't know how it is that God has front and a back, but there's something about God's glory that if we in our humanity were to fully see God's glory, we like couldn't handle it. Maybe it's like C.S. Lewis's book, The Great Divorce, where they take a bus ride up to heaven and heaven is so solid that the blades of grass poke through their skin. Like they're just not substantial enough to handle it.

And perhaps that's the truth with Moses, but he has more access to God's presence than anyone else. And I think this is a beautiful resolution to the breach between God and humanity at the garden. And that's why we can't afford to just skip over the tabernacle, because this is resolving one of the biggest problems in the Bible, or the biggest problem of separation from God.

So Exodus, in my is the best book of the Bible. I hope that I have convinced you at least the best book of the Old Testament. It is such a powerful identity forming story that also shows us what we're here to do and how we can then carry out God's mission in the world.

So I hope that you've been inspired by this. If you want to go deeper, you can check out my longer 15 hour course on Exodus, where we get into more details, or my YouTube channel where I get into lots of gritty details throughout the book of Exodus. It's been a joy to hang out with you.

Thanks for joining me.