Boring.
God tells Moses to build the Tabernacle so He can hand down the Law. I’ve heard that every part of the Bible is there for a good reason, and I’ll buy that, but I’m not sure every part is meant to be meaningful to every person, at least not at all times. But who knows? Maybe there will be a time in the future when these building specs will help me spiritually.
I suppose it is kind of reassuring to see God give such specific instructions. We tend to have kind of a vague picture in our culture of a mystical, impersonal God who kind of subtly influences things from afar. In Genesis, he rarely tells anyone to do things directly, and when He does, it is usually a small, symbolic act like cutting some birds in half or something. Even when He told Noah to build the ark, the only instructions are about how many cubits long to make it. I suppose that story was already a thousand years old by the time it was written down for the first time though.
You hear a story like Evan Almighty, that Steve Carell movie that kind of parallels the story of Noah, and God is constantly giving clever, vague instructions and no one ever knows why anything is the way it is or what the next step is going to be. Sometimes it is like that, but in Exodus God basically hands Moses a blueprint for the tabernacle. I guess it’s still true that nobody knows why any of the plans are exactly the way they are, why God wants gold trim around the edges of the table or cherubim embroidered on the curtains, but as long as the what is clear, I think it’s reasonable to accept “because God says so” as the why.
A huge curtain hundreds of feet long surrounds the tabernacle, then the tabernacle itself is inside, with a sanctuary inside that. Then the ark of the covenant is inside the sanctuary. It’s like a giant acacia wood and gold leaf covered fractal. Some researchers are finding that that kind of design is actually popular in a lot of very old African cultures. The villages themselves are each arranged in some shape, then each family compound is arranged in the same shape and the buildings themselves are also built in that shape. Then there might be a little shrine inside the buildings of the same shape as well. Each layer of the tabernacle is just box-shaped though so that’s kind of boring as fractals go.
There is also some furniture that God wants in the tabernacle: a table, a lamp and an altar for burnt offerings. God provides specifications for how each should be constructed. The materials for all of this stuff is to be donated by the Israelites “from each man whose heart prompts him to give.” Ex 25:2 NIV It’s fascinating to me that even under the old covenant, so much of the worship of God was so self-directed. It would have been really easy fo God or Moses to just roll through camp and collect what was needed. This is the tabernacle after all, important stuff. God told Moses though, just tell the people we need an offering and it will work itself out. I think that’s neat. In addition to all that gold and wood and animal hide needed for the offering, the people are also told to donate lots of clear oil for burning. Aaron and his sons are supposed to keep lamps burning from evening to morning every night. Not just every night like during construction or every night while they’re worshiping either. It sounds like they’re supposed to keep these lamps burning every night pretty much forever.
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