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Biblion Bible Commentary

Read the introduction to Exodus · About this commentary

Curtains, Boards and a Veil

Exodus 26:1-37

1 “Moreover you shall make the tabernacle with ten curtains of fine twined linen, and blue, and purple, and scarlet, with cherubim. You shall make them with the work of a skillful workman. · WEB

Four coverings hide a structure of gold, and one embroidered curtain divides the two rooms.

Moreover you shall make the tabernacle with ten curtains of fine twined linen, and blue, and purple, and scarlet, with cherubim Exodus 26:1.

The tent is built from the inside out, in four layers, and the order in which they are described is the order in which they would be seen by someone standing inside and looking up.

First the linen, dyed and embroidered with cherubim — the ceiling of the holy place, visible only to priests. Then curtains of goats' hair for a covering over the tabernacle Exodus 26:7, eleven of them, plain. Then rams' skins dyed red, and outermost a covering of hides Exodus 26:14.

The gradient runs one way. What is innermost is most beautiful and least seen; what is outermost is weatherproof and plain. A traveler passing the camp would see a low tent covered in leather, entirely unremarkable, with no indication of what the inside was made of. The description of one who has no good looks or majesty... no beauty that we should desire him Isaiah 53:2 is written about a person, and the tent was built on the same principle.

You shall make the boards for the tabernacle of acacia wood, standing upright Exodus 26:15.

The frame is desert acacia, a hard, twisted, thorny wood from a tree that survives where nothing else does, overlaid entirely with gold and standing in sockets of silver. Every board is identical in dimension and every one is set in the same footing, which is worth noticing in a structure paid for by an offering that the wealthy could have dominated.

You shall make a veil of blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine twined linen, with cherubim. It shall be the work of a skillful workman Exodus 26:31.

The most consequential object in the chapter. It carries cherubim, like the ceiling and like the figures over the ark, and its function is stated without softening: the veil shall separate the holy place from the most holy for you Exodus 26:33.

This is the barrier the whole system is built around. Behind it, the ark and the presence; in front of it, priests working daily by lamplight who may not go through. One man may pass, once a year, with blood Leviticus 16:2. The arrangement makes the nearness real and keeps it fenced, and the letter to the Hebrews reads the fence as a statement rather than an accident: while the first tent stood, the way into the Holy Place wasn't yet revealed Hebrews 9:8.

Which is why the account of the crucifixion pauses to report a piece of interior damage. The veil of the temple was torn in two from the top to the bottom Matthew 27:51. Torn downward, from a height no one could reach, at the moment the death occurred.

You shall set up the tabernacle according to the way that it was shown to you on the mountain Exodus 26:30.

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