An Altar, a Courtyard, and a Light Kept Burning

About seven and a half feet square and four and a half high, the altar is the largest object in the sanctuary. Solomon’s bronze altar was twenty cubits square and ten high (2 Chronicles 4:1), four times as broad as this one.

A large horned altar of dressed stone was excavated at Beersheba in 1973, its four corner horns still recognisable. Amos 3:14 threatens that at Bethel “the horns of the altar shall be cut off”, the altar’s most sacred point broken first.

The “basons” are mizraqot, from zaraq, to toss, the bowls from which blood was dashed against the altar. The “fleshhooks” are forks; in 1 Samuel 2:13–14 the servant of Eli’s sons plunges a three pronged fleshhook into the pot and keeps whatever it brings up.

The grate, mikhbar, is a lattice of bronze mesh. Whether it held the fire inside the altar or ran round the outside as a lattice skirt is disputed, and the rings set on it complicate every reconstruction.

The “compass” is karkov, a ledge or rim, found only here and in 38:4. If a priest stood on such a ledge, it would explain Leviticus 9:22, where Aaron “came down” from offering; that is a common inference, not something the text states.

The altar’s poles are bronze, as the ark’s and the table’s were gold. Each piece of furniture is carried on poles of its own metal, so the grading of materials holds even in the fittings.

Numbers 4:13–14 describes the altar on the march: the ashes cleared, a purple cloth spread over it, the utensils laid on top, and tachash skins over all before the poles were put in.

A hollow box of boards could not bear fire on its own. Rashi held that it was filled with earth wherever the camp stopped, which would make it the “altar of earth” of 20:24 in a bronze casing; that is an inference, though a widely held one.

The court, chatser, is about a hundred and fifty feet long. Its hangings are of plain linen with no colour named, a white enclosure round the dark skins of the tent.

The “fillets” are chashuqim, bands or rods joining the pillars, from chashaq, to cling or be attached, the verb used when Shechem’s soul “longeth” for Dinah (Genesis 34:8). Twenty pillars along a hundred cubits puts one every five cubits.

The north side mirrors the south exactly. Round the whole court the pillars number sixty: twenty, twenty, ten, and the three, three and four of the east.

The west end is the court’s back wall, fifty cubits across. On the usual reconstruction the tent stood in the western half of the court, so the ark lay near the middle of a square fifty cubits each way.

“Eastward” is mizrachah, toward the sunrise. The layout made every worshipper entering the gate face west, away from the rising sun; Ezekiel 8:16 condemns men who stood in the temple court with their backs to the sanctuary, “and they worshipped the sun toward the east”.

The Hebrew calls these side hangings the shoulder, katef, of the gate. Fifteen cubits of plain linen on either side flank the opening like shoulders on either side of a head.

Fifteen, then twenty for the gate, then fifteen: the east side adds up to its fifty cubits. The arithmetic is left for the reader to check against verse 13.

The gate is twenty cubits wide, twice the width of the tent itself. The way in narrows as it goes: a broad gate into the court, a ten cubit door into the tent, and at last the veil.

Chapter 38:17 adds that the capitals of these pillars were overlaid with silver, and 38:28 that the hooks and fillets used 1,775 shekels of it. Bronze stays on the ground and silver rides at the top.

Five cubits is about seven and a half feet, above a man’s head. People outside could not see into the court, but the tent, ten cubits high, would have stood above the linen wall.

The “pins” are yetedot, tent pegs. It is the same word as the peg Jael drove through Sisera’s temple (Judges 4:21). Even the pegs of the sanctuary are counted among its vessels.

“Beaten” is katit, crushed in a mortar rather than pressed. Crushing gave the first, clearest oil, which burned with little smoke. “Always” is tamid, the word that later names the daily burnt offering.

“Tabernacle of the congregation” renders ohel mo’ed, which means tent of meeting, of the appointed meeting, and this is its first use in the Bible. First Samuel 3:3 dates Samuel’s call to the hour “ere the lamp of God went out” in the temple at Shiloh.