Exodus 26:31-33
The veil shall divide unto you
The purpose is separation, stated as a service to the people rather than a restriction on them.
Objects of the Bible
The veil
A curtain with cherubim woven into it, doing the same job as the ones with the flaming sword.
It is made of blue and purple and scarlet and fine twined linen, with cherubim of cunning work, hung on four pillars of shittim wood overlaid with gold standing in four sockets of silver. Its function is stated as a division: the veil shall divide unto you between the holy place and the most holy. Everything about the tent is arranged around what is on the other side of it, and almost nobody goes through.
Scroll down to the storyThe movements, in the order the text gives them.
The story of The veil
- 01
- 02
Genesis 3:24
Cherubims, and a flaming sword
The same figures are woven into the curtain that once stood at the gate of a garden. The tabernacle repeats an older arrangement in cloth.
- 03
Leviticus 16:2
Not at all times into the holy place within the veil
The restriction is absolute except for one day, and the reason given is survival rather than protocol.
- 04
Matthew 27:50-51
From the top to the bottom
The direction is recorded and it matters. Nothing reachable from the floor could have started a tear where that one started.
- 05
Hebrews 10:19-20
A new and living way
The letter reads the curtain as a body and the tearing as an opening, and the word it uses for the way through is living.
Why it matters
The figures woven into it are the detail that carries the meaning. Cherubim were last seen at the east of Eden keeping the way of the tree of life, and here they are again on the cloth in front of the ark. Hebrews reads the whole arrangement as a statement about access: the way into the holiest of all was not yet made manifest while the first tabernacle was standing. And then the gospels report what happened to it at three in the afternoon on a Friday, in one clause, and note the direction it tore.
2 songs
The music
Every song in the catalogue whose passage falls inside these chapters.
Matthew 27:32-56; Mark 15:21-41; Luke 23:26-49; John 19:16-37
It Is Finished
