MOSES' TABERNACLE
MOSES GIVES INSTRUCTIONS
TO MAKE THE TABERNACLE
(Exodus 35, 4-29 - King James version)
4 And Moses spake unto all the congregation of the children of Israel, saying, This is the thing which the LORD commanded, saying,
5 Take ye from among you an offering unto the LORD: whosoever is of a willing heart, let him bring it, an offering of the LORD; gold, and silver, and brass,
6 And blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine linen, and goats' hair,
7 And rams' skins dyed red, and badgers' skins, and shittim wood,
8 And oil for the light, and spices for anointing oil, and for the sweet incense,
9 And onyx stones, and stones to be set for the ephod, and for the breastplate.
10 And every wise hearted among you shall come, and make all that the LORD hath commanded;
11 The tabernacle, his tent, and his covering, his taches, and his boards, his bars, his pillars, and his sockets,
12 The ark, and the staves thereof, with the mercy seat, and the vail of the covering,
13 The table, and his staves, and all his vessels, and the shewbread,
14 The candlestick also for the light, and his furniture, and his lamps, with the oil for the light,
15 And the incense altar, and his staves, and the anointing oil, and the sweet incense, and the hanging for the door at the entering in of the tabernacle,
16 The altar of burnt offering, with his brasen grate, his staves, and all his vessels, the laver and his foot,
17 The hangings of the court, his pillars, and their sockets, and the hanging for the door of the court,
18 The pins of the tabernacle, and the pins of the court, and their cords,
19 The cloths of service, to do service in the holy place, the holy garments for Aaron the priest, and the garments of his sons, to minister in the priest's office.
20 And all the congregation of the children of Israel departed from the presence of Moses.
21 And they came, every one whose heart stirred him up, and every one whom his spirit made willing, and they brought the LORD'S offering to the work of the tabernacle of the congregation, and for all his service, and for the holy garments.
22 And they came, both men and women, as many as were willing hearted, and brought bracelets, and earrings, and rings, and tablets, all jewels of gold: and every man that offered an offering of gold unto the LORD.
23 And every man, with whom was found blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine linen, and goats' hair, and red skins of rams, and badgers' skins, brought them.
24 Every one that did offer an offering of silver and brass brought the LORD'S offering: and every man, with whom was found shittim wood for any work of the service, brought it.
25 And all the women that were wise hearted did spin with their hands, and brought that which they had spun, both of blue, and of purple, and of scarlet, and of fine linen.
26 And all the women whose heart stirred them up in wisdom spun goats' hair.
27 And the rulers brought onyx stones, and stones to be set, for the ephod, and for the breastplate;
28 And spice, and oil for the light, and for the anointing oil, and for the sweet incense.
29 The children of Israel brought a willing offering unto the LORD, every man and woman, whose heart made them willing to bring for all manner of work, which the LORD had commanded to be made by the hand of Moses.
IMPORTANCE OF THE TABERNACLE
IN THE HISTORY OF ISRAEL
This in the beginning of one of the most accurate and detailed accounts of the book of Exodus, dedicated to the construction of that handicraft that the Hebrew text names as "miqdas", that is Saint or Sanctuary, and "mishkan", term that is variously translated as Dwelling, Tabernacle, Tent of the Assembly , Sanctuary, Dwelling in the Desert. Different terms to indicate what was a proper mobile temple, or better a temple-tent.
The temple-tent played a very important part in the history of Israel. The Jews worked on this project for at least eight months, making full use of all their technical skills and all the precious materials they brought from Egypt to this purpose. Once erected, it became the real center of the religious and social life of the Jewish people. Not simply a symbol, but a really effective instrument of unification, around which the entire life of that people revolved.
Thanks to that temple, Israel acquired the conscience of its own identity and found the strength and the determination to conquer the Promised Land. Thus it was thanks to the temple-tent that the 12 tribes of Israel (actually 13, because Joseph's sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, gave origin to two separate tribes) became a nation and Moses' law a religion.
The exceptional importance of the temple-tent is attested by the huge space that the Pentateuch gives to its description: 13 chapters in Exodus, plus several others in Numbers and Leviticus. Nonetheless this subject is neglected by the scholars and almost ignored. Personally I never found accurate studies of the technical characteristics of this object and of the rationale on which they were based.
TENTATIVE RECONSTRUCTIONS OF THE TABERNACLE
The description of each single piece
of the Tabernacle is very detailed and accurate, so much so that there should be no problems in
making an object strictly matching that description. However all the classical reconstructions
of the Tabernacle seem to have little in common with it.
Probably this is due to the
initial belief that its plan reflected that of the later Solomon’s temple.
Almost all the reconstructions found in modern texts are rooted in an assumption no less than amazing: that Moses' Tabernacle was built based upon the same basic model used for the temple of Solomon. According to the descriptions given in Kings 5,16; 7,13, and Chronicles 2,2, etc., Solomon's temple, built at least two centuries later, was a typically Phoenician structure and consisted of a relatively small building placed in the center of a large courtyard. The first who outlined a model of the Tabernacle made his best to adapt the Exodus’ description of it to the model of Solomon’s Temple.
On top a hypothetical plan and model of Solomon’s Temple. At the bottom a plan and a reconstruction of Moses’ Tabernacle according to the model of Solomon’s temple
The result can be seen in the following pictures: the “grandiose” temple-tent for the making of which a population of more than 30.000 people worked during eight months, using all their skills and the riches brought from Egypt, is reduced to an enclosure of 50 x 100 cubits, with a strange structure in its centre of such minute dimensions that one would be hard put to find room to place the objects described in the text.
Some of the numerous representations of the Tabernacle, drawn according to the model of Solomon’s temple
The miserable aspect of the hut which, according to the above reconstructions, contained the Holy Place and the Most Holy Place of the mobile Temple
A real model of Moses’ Tabernacle, built ( on size 1 cubit = 45 cm) inside the natural park of Timna, according the hypothetical plan of Solomon’s Temple
In order to reconstruct Moses' Tabernacle according to this model, it is necessary to interpret Exodus description in an extremely free way, ignoring or even twisting the precise information provided by the text; and in any case the result is absurd from a technical point of view.
THE CORRECT RECONSTRUCTION OF MOSES’ TABERNACLE
Obviously Moses must have based his project on some model; it could not possibly have been that of Solomon's temple, but rather of some temple in the land where he was born and grew up: Egypt. The Egyptian temples of that period have a completely different layout, consisting of a large rectangular building with a series of courtyards in front, through which one passes to reach the temple itself.
Plans of the funerary temples of Ramses II and Ramses III in Egypt, with a large covered building, where the Holy and the Most Holy were placed, on the left, and two courtyards in front of it
The model of Moses’ Tabernacle drawn according to Exodus’ description, matches the plan of an Egyptian funerary temple of the same period
If we assume that Moses' Tabernacle design was based on that of an Egyptian temple of the same period, the Exodus description becomes completely clear and permits an accurate and coherent reconstruction in which each single piece has a precise and technically correct function. In this way, every related word in Exodus is substantiated, and the resulting reconstruction agrees in minute detail with the description given, and matches form with the function for which each piece was designed.
The main difference between the two models lays in the courtyard: a large wall that surrounded the entire Templar complex in the Phoenician model, to which Solomon’s temple was inspired; simple courtyards in the front side of the proper temple in the Egyptian model, to which Moses’ Tabernacle was obviously inspired.
Moses’ temple, then, consisted of a large tent, the Tabernacle, with a courtyard in front. The tent and the courtyard both had the same measurements: 50 x 100 cubits. The Tabernacle was divided into two parts: the Most Holy Place, reserved for the Divinity and measuring 40 x 50 cubits and, the Holy Place, measuring 60 x 50 cubit). The two parts were separated by a curtain of embroidered linen, the Veil, which was supported by four posts. The entrance to the Tabernacle was closed by a drape, also of linen and supported by five pillars.
The Tabernacle itself was composed of a large tarpaulin, or awning, supported by a series of boards (stanchions) each of 10 cubits high-- forty boards arranged in two parallel lines longitudinally and eight boards on the back. The tarpaulin was made of long sheets of goats’ hair, interwoven with rams’ wool, dyed red (see following "Constructional plans of the Tabernacle"), with large strips of leather stretched across and anchored to stakes on the ground, thereby forming a solid roof. The border of that roof hung down freely at the sides for a length of 1 cubit and to this overlap the double wall of the Tabernacle was tied. The wall was made of embroidered linen curtains on the inside, and curtains woven with goats' hair on the outside.
The Holy Place was divided in three parts: a central nave and two aisles, the limits of which were determined by the supporting boards. The Most Holy Place was divided into two parts by the eight supporting boards, delimiting the area in which the Ark of the Covenant was placed; at the sides and behind there were "retreats" for the priests.
Precise plan of Moses’ temple-tent, as it results from the print left on the ground at Har Karkom (see the following: "Print of the tabernacle on the ground" )
In the Holy Place, behind the Veil, the following objects were to be found: in the right-hand aisle (back to the Most Holy Place), the menorah; in the left-hand aisle there was a table for the bread, and in the central nave there was a small table for burning incense. Access to the Holy Place was effected through an entrance measuring 20 x 10 cubits, its limits determined by a linen curtain supported by five pillars of shittim (acacia) wood. At the entrance, a wash basin was arranged for holy ablutions.
In front of the Tabernacle there was an inner courtyard, measuring 15 x 50 cubits, formed by an extension of the outside wall, made by ten curtains of goats’ hair joined together; an eleventh curtain, also goats’ hair, was used to restrict access from the outside courtyard into the inner courtyard on particular occasions, and was normally folded back in front of the Tabernacle. In the center of the inner courtyard there was the altar, upon which burnt offerings were made. The inner courtyard was delimited in front by a line of ten posts of shittim wood, to which the enclosing curtain was fixed.
The outside courtyard was formed by a long curtain of coarse linen, 5 cubits high, supported by twenty posts of shittim wood on each side. It began at the sides of the Tabernacle, to which it was fastened, and, therefore, also surrounded the inner courtyard. At the end of the outside courtyard there was another line of ten posts (which including those that delimited the churchyard, totaled sixty), of which the central ones, placed behind the others, served to support the entrance curtain, which was made of embroidered linen.
In front of the altar of burnt offerings (or more probably at its side), there was a brazier where a substance for making smoke was left constantly burning. The brazier was removed before departing (Ex. 34,38; Nm. 9,15-23).
The outside courtyard was clear of everything; the common people assembled there for public ceremonies, etc.
Its dimensions were 50 x 85 cubits.
Such is the plan of Moses Tabernacle, if we assemble in the technically obliged way all the components as they are described in the biblical text.
The supporting structure of the tabernacle and a general view of it.
See following: Constructional plans of the Tabernacle