A Dwelling Begins with Willing Hands

The instructions of chapters 25–31 come in seven speeches, each opened by the LORD speaking to Moses (25:1; 30:11, 17, 22, 34; 31:1, 12). The seventh is about the Sabbath, and many readers have heard in the arrangement an echo of the seven days of Genesis 1.

The “offering” is terumah, something lifted off and set apart from a larger whole; Jewish readers name this section of Exodus after the word. “Willingly with his heart” is literally whose heart makes him willing, and 35:21 shows it happening: “every one whose heart stirred him up.”

“Brass” in 1611 meant copper or bronze, nechoshet; true brass, with zinc, is later. The metals descend in value, and so will the building: gold inside the tent, silver for the sockets, bronze in the open court.

Blue, tekhelet, and purple, argaman, were both dyes made from murex sea snails; scarlet, tola’at shani, is literally the worm of crimson, from an insect dye. Goats’ hair made the black tent cloth of the Bedouin, the “tents of Kedar” of the Song of Solomon 1:5.

The tachash hide is uncertain. The King James follows a rabbinic guess, badger; others read dugong, the sea cow of the Red Sea, or simply fine leather. Shittim is acacia, one of the few timber trees that grows in Sinai, and gives its name to the camp at Shittim in Numbers 25:1.

Each item here gets its recipe later in the book: the oil in 27:20, pure and beaten; the anointing oil of myrrh, cinnamon, calamus and cassia in 30:23–25; and the incense of four equal spices in 30:34.

The onyx, shoham, is a stone whose identity is uncertain, and it has appeared once before: in Eden’s land of Havilah, where there is “bdellium and the onyx stone” (Genesis 2:12). The ephod and breastplate are named here two chapters before they are described.

“Sanctuary” is miqdash, holy place, from the same root as “sanctify” in 19:10. John 1:14 reaches back to this language: “the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us”, where the Greek verb is literally pitched his tent.

The “pattern” is tavnit, a plan or model. David later gives Solomon “the pattern” of the temple, written, he says, “by his hand upon me” (1 Chronicles 28:11–12, 19). The word mishkan, tabernacle, appears here for the first time in the Bible.

The ark is an aron, a chest, the same word as Joseph’s coffin in Genesis 50:26, and a different word from Noah’s ark and the basket of 2:3, both tevah. At about eighteen inches to the cubit, it measures roughly 45 by 27 by 27 inches.

“Within and without” is the phrase used for Noah’s ark, pitched “within and without” (Genesis 6:14). The zer, “crown”, is a raised moulding round the top edge, and the lid would sit inside it.

The rings are cast, poured into moulds rather than bent from wire. The word behind “corners” is pa’amot, literally feet or steps, which suggests the rings sat low on the chest, at its feet.

David’s first attempt to bring the ark to Jerusalem ignored the staves and used a new cart, and Uzzah died steadying it (2 Samuel 6:3–7). The second time, 1 Chronicles 15:15 notes, the Levites bore it “upon their shoulders with the staves thereon, as Moses commanded”.

The Levites of the family of Kohath carry it, and Numbers 4:15 warns them that they “shall not touch any holy thing, lest they die”. The staves put distance between hand and ark even while it is carried.

The staves were still in place generations later. First Kings 8:8 says that in Solomon’s temple they were drawn out so that their ends could be seen from the holy place, “and there they are unto this day”.

The testimony is the pair of stone tablets. First Kings 8:9 says there was “nothing in the ark save the two tables of stone”, while Hebrews 9:4 lists the pot of manna and Aaron’s rod as well; the two texts describe different times in the ark’s history.

“Mercy seat” was coined by William Tyndale, after Luther’s Gnadenstuhl. The Hebrew kapporet comes from kaphar, to cover or to atone. No height is given; it is a slab of pure gold the exact size of the chest beneath it.

“Cherubims” is a double plural, English -s added to Hebrew -im. The cherubim last appeared at the east of Eden, keeping the way to the tree of life (Genesis 3:24). “Beaten work” means hammered, miqshah, from a single mass of gold.

“Even of the mercy seat” means out of it: the cherubim are hammered from the same piece as the lid, not made separately and fixed on. Solomon’s later cherubim were of olive wood, ten cubits high, standing on the floor (1 Kings 6:23).

“Covering” is sokhekhim, screening or overshadowing, the verb from which sukkah, a booth, is built. The wings shelter the lid while the faces turn inward and downward, looking at the place where the testimony lies beneath.

The verse repeats verse 16, and the repetition fixes an order: testimony in, lid on. Moses follows exactly that sequence when the tabernacle is raised in 40:20, putting in the testimony first and setting the mercy seat above it.

“Commune” is dibbarti, I will speak. Numbers 7:89 records it happening: Moses went in and “heard the voice of one speaking unto him from off the mercy seat”. From here comes the title “the LORD... which dwelleth between the cherubims” (1 Samuel 4:4).

The table is two cubits by one and stands a cubit and a half high, exactly the height of the ark. It is the only piece given a length shorter than the ark’s, half a cubit less.

A later table from Herod’s temple is carved on the Arch of Titus in Rome, carried in the triumph after Jerusalem fell in AD 70, with the menorah beside it. The gold crown here is the first of two; the next verse adds another.

The border, misgeret, is a frame a handbreadth wide, the width of four fingers, about three inches. Whether it ran round the tabletop as a rim or between the legs as a brace is debated, and rabbinic sources record both views.

The ark’s rings were at its base; the table’s are on its four feet, the legs. Each piece of furniture is carried by its own fittings, and none is simply picked up.

“Places of the staves” is literally “houses for the poles”, battim. The rings sit close to the border frame, so that frame, rings and poles work together as one carrying structure.

Numbers 4:7–8 shows the table moving: covered with blue, then scarlet, then tachash skins, with the bread still lying on it, “the continual bread shall be thereon”. The poles let it travel fully set.

The four vessels are plates, small pans for incense (kappot, literally palms), jars and bowls. The King James “to cover withal” misreads the verb; it means “to pour out withal”, and the jars and bowls held drink offerings.

“Shewbread” is another Tyndale coinage, after Luther’s Schaubrot. The Hebrew is lechem panim, bread of the face or presence. David and his men ate it at Nob (1 Samuel 21:6), and Jesus cites that in Mark 2:26.

The “candlestick” is the menorah. Its “shaft” is yerekh, literally thigh, the base and main stem; the “knops” are knobs, probably a calyx, the swelling below a flower. Everything is to be “of the same”, one continuous piece.

Three branches on each side of a central stem makes seven lights in all. Zechariah 4:2–3 sees such a lampstand in a night vision, with a bowl on top and two olive trees beside it supplying the oil.

The Hebrew for almond is shaqed, and Jeremiah 1:11–12 puns on it with shoqed, watching: the almond is the tree that wakes first in the year. Aaron’s rod later blossoms and yields almonds overnight (Numbers 17:8).

The central shaft carries four almond cups to each branch’s three. Across the whole lampstand that makes twenty two cups, a figure the text leaves the reader to add up.

A knop sits at each point where a pair of branches leaves the shaft, three junctions for six branches. The places where the metal divides are made into ornaments, so the joins become part of the design.

One beaten work means the whole lampstand was hammered out of a single block of gold, branches and flowers included, with nothing soldered on. That is the task Bezalel is named for in 31:2–3.

The lamps were separate small vessels set on top of the branches. “Over against it” means they threw their light forward; Numbers 8:2–3 says Aaron set them to “give light over against the candlestick”, facing the table across the room (26:35).

The “tongs” are melqachayim, takers, for trimming wicks; Isaiah’s seraph uses the same word when he lifts a live coal “with the tongs” from the altar (Isaiah 6:6). The snuffdishes held burnt wick ends.

A talent, kikkar, was about seventy five pounds. The word means something round, a disc or a loaf, and is also the “plain” of Jordan in Genesis 13:10, the round basin of the valley.

The Hebrew uses seeing twice: see, and make, after the pattern you were made to see. Stephen cites this line in Acts 7:44, and Hebrews 8:5 quotes it in full.