Exodus 38

The TorahRooted Bible (TRB), translated directly from the Hebrew and Greek.

The bronze altar and the laver

¹ He made the altar of burnt offering of acacia wood, five cubits long and five cubits wide; it was square, and its height was three cubits. ² He made its horns on its four corners; its horns were of one piece with it, and he overlaid it with bronze. ³ He made all the utensils of the altar: the pots, the shovels, the basins, the forks, and the firepans; all its utensils he made of bronze. ⁴ He made for the altar a grating, a network of bronze, under its ledge, beneath, reaching halfway up. ⁵ He cast four rings on the four corners of the bronze grating, as holders for the poles. ⁶ He made the poles of acacia wood and overlaid them with bronze. ⁷ And he put the poles into the rings on the sides of the altar, to carry it with them. He made it hollow, with boards.

⁸ He made the laver of bronze and its stand of bronze, from the mirrors of the serving women who served at the entrance of the tent of meeting.

The courtyard

⁹ He made the courtyard. For the south side, toward the south, the hangings of the courtyard were of fine twined linen, a hundred cubits. ¹⁰ Their pillars were twenty and their bases twenty, of bronze; the hooks of the pillars and their bands were of silver. ¹¹ For the north side there were a hundred cubits, their twenty pillars and their twenty bases of bronze; the hooks of the pillars and their bands were of silver. ¹² For the west side there were hangings of fifty cubits, with their ten pillars and their ten bases; the hooks of the pillars and their bands were of silver. ¹³ For the east side, toward the sunrise, fifty cubits. ¹⁴ The hangings for one side of the gate were fifteen cubits, with their three pillars and their three bases. ¹⁵ And for the other side, on this side and that side of the gate of the courtyard, were hangings of fifteen cubits, with their three pillars and their three bases. ¹⁶ All the hangings around the courtyard were of fine twined linen. ¹⁷ The bases for the pillars were of bronze, the hooks of the pillars and their bands of silver, and the overlaying of their capitals of silver; all the pillars of the courtyard were banded with silver. ¹⁸ The screen for the gate of the courtyard was the work of an embroiderer, of blue and purple and scarlet and fine twined linen. It was twenty cubits long, and its height along its width was five cubits, corresponding to the hangings of the courtyard. ¹⁹ Their pillars were four and their bases four, of bronze; their hooks were of silver, and the overlaying of their capitals and their bands of silver. ²⁰ All the pegs for the tabernacle and for the courtyard all around were of bronze.

The materials of the tabernacle

²¹ These are the accounts of the tabernacle, the tabernacle of the Testimony, as they were counted at the command of Moses, the work of the Levites under the direction of Ithamar the son of Aaron the priest. ²² Bezalel the son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah, made all that Yahweh commanded Moses; ²³ and with him was Oholiab the son of Ahisamach, of the tribe of Dan, an engraver and a skilled designer and an embroiderer in blue and purple and scarlet and fine linen.

²⁴ All the gold that was used for the work, in all the work of the holy place, the gold of the wave offering, was twenty-nine talents and seven hundred and thirty shekels, according to the shekel of the sanctuary. ²⁵ The silver from those of the congregation who were counted was a hundred talents and one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five shekels, according to the shekel of the sanctuary: ²⁶ a beka a head, that is, half a shekel, according to the shekel of the sanctuary, for everyone who passed over to those who were numbered, from twenty years old and upward, for six hundred and three thousand, five hundred and fifty men. ²⁷ The hundred talents of silver were for casting the bases of the holy place and the bases of the veil: a hundred bases for the hundred talents, a talent for a base. ²⁸ And of the one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five shekels he made hooks for the pillars, overlaid their capitals, and made bands for them. ²⁹ The bronze of the wave offering was seventy talents and two thousand four hundred shekels. ³⁰ With it he made the bases for the entrance of the tent of meeting, the bronze altar and the bronze grating for it, and all the utensils of the altar, ³¹ the bases of the courtyard all around and the bases of the gate of the courtyard, all the pegs of the tabernacle, and all the pegs of the courtyard all around.

Notes

• 38:8 Mirrors in that age were disks of polished bronze. "The serving women who served" uses tsava, a word for organized service, used later of the Levites' work at the tent (Numbers 4:23; 8:24); these women appear again only in 1 Samuel 2:22, and Scripture does not say what their service was. Since the tabernacle was not yet standing, the "tent of meeting" here may be the tent Moses pitched outside the camp (33:7).
• 38:21 "Accounts" is pequdei, from paqad, "to count, to muster," the same root used for the men "counted" in verses 25-26. "The tabernacle of the Testimony" (mishkan ha-edut) takes its name from the tablets kept in the ark (25:16). Stephen speaks of "the tabernacle of the testimony in the wilderness" (Acts 7:44), and John sees "the temple of the tabernacle of the testimony in heaven" opened (Revelation 15:5).
• 38:24 Verses 25-26 show that a talent was three thousand shekels: 603550 half-shekels make 301775 shekels, that is, exactly one hundred talents and 1775 shekels. With a shekel of about 11.4 grams (30:13), the gold weighed roughly a metric ton (about 1000 kilograms), the silver about three and a half metric tons (3440 kilograms), and the bronze (verse 29) about two and a half metric tons (2420 kilograms). "Wave offering" (tenufah) is the word of 29:24; here, as in 35:22, it means gifts presented to Yahweh.
• 38:26 A beka, from a root meaning "to split," was half a shekel, about a fifth of an ounce (5.7 grams); small stone weights inscribed with this word have been found in excavations in Israel. This is the half-shekel of 30:13-15. The number of men, 603550, is exactly the total of the census of Numbers 1:46, taken a month after the tabernacle was set up (Numbers 1:1).
• 38:27 The hundred silver bases were the ninety-six under the forty-eight boards of the tabernacle (two under each board: 26:19-25; 36:24-30) and the four under the pillars of the veil (26:32; 36:36). Each weighed a talent, some seventy-five pounds (34 kilograms). The silver of the people's ransom money (30:12-16) thus became the very foundation on which the dwelling stood.

Exodus 37 · Exodus 39

Open in the study app