Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Exodus · About this commentary
The Court and the Reckoning
Exodus 38:1-31
1 He made the altar of burnt offering of acacia wood. It was square. Its length was five cubits, its width was five cubits, and its height was three cubits. · WEB
The altar, the basin and the court are built, and then the whole cost is published to the last shekel.
These are the amounts of materials used for the tabernacle, even the Tabernacle of the Testimony, as they were counted Exodus 38:21.
After the bronze altar, the basin and the linen court comes something the instructions never asked for: an audit. The gold, silver and bronze are weighed and the totals published — twenty-nine talents and seven hundred thirty shekels of gold Exodus 38:24, and silver reckoned at a beka a head, that is, half a shekel... for six hundred three thousand five hundred fifty men Exodus 38:26.
The silver figure is the census ransom of chapter thirty Exodus 30:13, and the arithmetic is checkable: the total divided by the half shekel gives the number of men, and it matches the count taken later Numbers 1:46. The sockets the whole structure stands in were cast from money paid by every adult at an identical rate.
By the hand of Ithamar, the son of Aaron the priest Exodus 38:21. Nothing required this. The materials had been given freely, by people who never asked for an accounting, and the reckoning was produced anyway, assigned to a named man. Where donated wealth is handled, the book's practice is to publish the figures.
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