The Glory Fills the Dwelling, and the Journey Remains Open

Through chapters 35 to 39 God does not speak once; Moses relays and the people make. The voice returns now that everything has been made and inspected, and what it gives is a date and an order of assembly.

The first day of the first month is New Year’s Day in the calendar begun at the Passover (12:2). It is the date on which, in Genesis 8:13, Noah removed the covering of his ark and saw the ground dry. Here a covering goes up instead of coming off.

“Cover” is sakkota, screen, the verb used in 25:20 and 37:9 of the cherubim’s wings sheltering the lid. The veil does not lie over the ark like a cloth; it screens it off from the room in front.

“Set in order the things that are to be set in order” is a cognate pair in Hebrew, “arrange its arrangement”. “Light” is he’elah, literally “cause to go up”, the verb from which olah, the burnt offering that goes up in smoke, is named.

The incense altar is set “before the ark”, directly in line with it though the veil stands between them. The door hanging is put up as soon as the holy place is furnished, before anything is placed outside.

Placed “before the door”, the altar of burnt offering stands in the path from the gate to the tent. Anyone coming in from the camp would meet the altar first, before any of the rest of the sanctuary.

The laver’s position puts it after the altar and before the door. A priest coming in from the court would pass the altar and then wash before entering the tent, so the washing stands between the sacrifice and the approach.

The court is the only part of the sanctuary an ordinary Israelite would enter, and it is set up last. The instructions build from the ark outward, so the place where the people stand is the final thing to be finished.

“Hallow” is the Old English word for making holy, from the same root as “holy”; both translate forms of qadash. The anointing oil of 30:22-33 touches the tent itself as well as everything in it, down to the vessels.

“Most holy” is qodesh qodashim, the same superlative used for the inner room where the ark stands. The altar in the open court receives the phrase too; 29:37 adds that whatever touches it becomes holy.

Even the laver’s foot, the stand, is anointed with it. A short verse, but it leaves no piece of the bronze equipment unconsecrated, from the altar’s tools to the base of the basin.

“Wash” is rachats, to bathe, not a rinse of the hands. It happens at the door of the tent, in the open, before the garments go on. Leviticus 8:6 records Moses doing exactly this.

The order is washing, then clothing, then anointing, the same order Leviticus 8:6-12 carries out. “Minister unto me in the priest’s office” is a single Hebrew verb, kihen, to act as priest, with the words “unto me” making the service God’s own.

The sons are clothed only with “coats”, the linen tunics. They wear none of the ephod, breastplate or blue robe; the verse measures the difference in rank by what is put on.

The anointing of the sons is said to cover “their generations”. Rashi read this to mean that the sons’ anointing was done once for all their line, so that later ordinary priests were not anointed again, while each high priest was.

The summary comes before the account it summarises: before a single board is raised, the Book of Exodus states that Moses did all that was commanded. The doubled phrasing, “according to all” and “so did he”, matches 39:32 and 39:42.

Israel came to Sinai in the third month of the first year (19:1), so the tabernacle stands about nine months after arrival. “Was reared up” is passive, huqam, raised, with no one named, before the next verse says who did it.

Moses raises it himself, from the ground up: sockets, boards, bars, pillars. A midrash (Tanchuma, Pekudei) says the craftsmen could not stand it up and that it rose only at Moses’ hand. The Book of Exodus names no helpers, which is what the midrash builds on.

“Spread abroad” is paras, the verb used of spreading wings or a garment. This is the first of seven times in the account of assembly that the phrase “as the LORD commanded Moses” closes a step, matching the seven in the making of the garments.

“The testimony” means the two tablets of 34:28-29. Looking back in Deuteronomy 10:5, Moses says of them, “and there they be, as the LORD commanded me”. The lid goes on last, and from then on no one sees the tablets again.

The ark goes in first, then the veil is hung in front of it. The inner room is closed around the ark once it is in place, rather than the ark being carried through a finished doorway.

Facing west, toward the ark, the north side is on the right. The table stands “without the vail”, outside it, in the outer room. From this point every object has a fixed side, so a priest would always know where each thing stood.

“Before the LORD”: the bread is on the outer side of the veil, yet still said to be before him. Moses sets it out the first time; Leviticus 24:8 makes it a weekly task, the loaves renewed every Sabbath.

“Over against” is nokhach, opposite: the lampstand faces the table across the room, on the south side. The layout sets bread and light facing each other with the incense altar between them before the veil.

The tent had no windows, and once the lamps are lit they are the only light inside. According to 27:21 they were to burn “from evening to morning”, so the lighting falls at the day’s end.

The golden altar goes nearest the veil, in the middle of the room. With the table to the north and the lampstand to the south, the three gold furnishings of the holy place form a triangle facing the inner room.

The first burning of the incense follows directly on the lighting of the lamps, as 30:7-8 ties them together: incense when the lamps are dressed in the morning and when they are lit at evening. Moses performs it before Aaron has been ordained.

The door hanging is hung after the interior is complete. Up to this point one man has been furnishing the holy place with the entrance open; now it is screened, and the rest of the work moves outside.

“Meat offering” is the King James rendering of minchah, and in 1611 “meat” meant any food, as in “meat and drink”. This offering contains no flesh at all; Leviticus 2 makes it of flour, oil and frankincense.

The verse repeats verse 7 almost word for word, adding only “to wash withal”. The command and the performance can be laid side by side, and they match exactly.

“Thereat” is mimmennu, “from it”: they washed with water drawn from the laver, not by stepping into it. Hands and feet are what handle the offerings and what tread the holy ground, where Moses was once told to take off his shoes (3:5).

The verbs are habitual: whenever they went in, whenever they came near, they washed. The verse steps beyond the first day and describes the standing practice, the same rule 30:20 attached to the threat “that they die not”.

“So Moses finished the work” is vaykhal Moshe et hamela’khah, the wording of Genesis 2:2, where God “ended his work”. The last act is the court gate, the outermost hanging. The sanctuary is finished at its edge, not at its centre.

“Covered” is the verb used of the cloud that covered Sinai in 24:15-16. “Glory” is kavod, from a root meaning heavy or weighty; the glory is the presence of God felt as weight, and here it fills the dwelling as it had filled the mountain.

“Abode” is shakhan, to settle or dwell, the verb from which mishkan, the tabernacle, is formed, and from which later Jewish writers took the word Shekinah for the divine presence. The tent was named for what now happens to it.

“Went onward” is nasa, a verb that means to pull up tent pegs; a journey in Hebrew is a pulling up of stakes. Numbers 9:15-23 expands these three closing verses into a whole account of how the cloud governed the march.

Numbers 9:22 fills in how long the waits could be: “two days, or a month, or a year”. The Book of Exodus gives only the rule. There is no provision for Israel leaving while the cloud stays.

“The house of Israel” once meant a household: the book opened with the sons of Israel who came into Egypt “every man and his household” (1:1). It ends with a nation called a house, and the last Hebrew word is massa’eihem, “their journeys”, still going.