1 And thou shalt make an altar of shittim wood, five cubits long, and five cubits broad; the altar shall be foursquare: and the height thereof shall be three cubits.Even more specs! Odds are that it's right around this time that someone invented the phrase, "Jesus Christ!"
2 And thou shalt make the horns of it upon the four corners thereof: his horns shall be of the same: and thou shalt overlay it with brass.
3 And thou shalt make his pans to receive his ashes, and his shovels, and his basons, and his fleshhooks, and his firepans: all the vessels thereof thou shalt make of brass.
4 And thou shalt make for it a grate of network of brass; and upon the net shalt thou make four brasen rings in the four corners thereof.
5 And thou shalt put it under the compass of the altar beneath, that the net may be even to the midst of the altar.
6 And thou shalt make staves for the altar, staves of shittim wood, and overlay them with brass.
7 And the staves shall be put into the rings, and the staves shall be upon the two sides of the altar, to bear it.
8 Hollow with boards shalt thou make it: as it was shewed thee in the mount, so shall they make it.
9 And thou shalt make the court of the tabernacle: for the south side southward there shall be hangings for the court of fine twined linen of an hundred cubits long for one side:
10 And the twenty pillars thereof and their twenty sockets shall be of brass; the hooks of the pillars and their fillets shall be of silver.
11 And likewise for the north side in length there shall be hangings of an hundred cubits long, and his twenty pillars and their twenty sockets of brass; the hooks of the pillars and their fillets of silver.
12 And for the breadth of the court on the west side shall be hangings of fifty cubits: their pillars ten, and their sockets ten.
13 And the breadth of the court on the east side eastward shall be fifty cubits.
14 The hangings of one side of the gate shall be fifteen cubits: their pillars three, and their sockets three.
15 And on the other side shall be hangings fifteen cubits: their pillars three, and their sockets three.
16 And for the gate of the court shall be an hanging of twenty cubits, of blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine twined linen, wrought with needlework: and their pillars shall be four, and their sockets four.
17 All the pillars round about the court shall be filleted with silver; their hooks shall be of silver, and their sockets of brass.
18 The length of the court shall be an hundred cubits, and the breadth fifty every where, and the height five cubits of fine twined linen, and their sockets of brass.
19 All the vessels of the tabernacle in all the service thereof, and all the pins thereof, and all the pins of the court, shall be of brass.
20 And thou shalt command the children of Israel, that they bring thee pure oil olive beaten for the light, to cause the lamp to burn always.
21 In the tabernacle of the congregation without the vail, which is before the testimony, Aaron and his sons shall order it from evening to morning before the LORD: it shall be a statute for ever unto their generations on the behalf of the children of Israel.
All that business with fleshhooks and "pans to receive his ashes" sounds pretty gory.
The last verse is a bit opaque. It would seem that it says the tabernacle needs to stay open all night, every night — forever.
Update: I wonder if the five-second rule comes up later in this commandment-filled chapter. If so, I hope they make an exception for floors of shittim wood.
7 comments:
Shittim wood? Is that for all the manure?
That got me thinking... so I updated the post. Thanks!
Most modern translations render that as "acacia wood".
God, among other things, was arguably the first engineer. (Although the engineer's unit of precise measurement, the "red cunt hair", appears nowhere in Scripture.) Wait until you get to Nehemiah.
Whenever I see/hear the term "cubit" I recall listening to old Bill Cosby comedy LP's when I was a kid, and the part when, as Noah, he asks god "what's a cubit?"
Then he implores god for heavenly advice concerning identifying the gender of mosquitos.
shrimplate,
Yup, I have that same association. And the same skepticism: "Right!" As in "yeah, right!"
Again this is from the Priestly Source, and is really an eyewitness account of the Jerusalem Temple. One of the most important points here is that the altar is described as "THE" altar, which contradicts the mention of ANOTHER altar, for incense, in chapter 31. The obvious explanation is that someone (another Aaronid writer) added the description of the OTHER altar at a later date, perhaps after the OTHER altar itself was really built.
The altar is a hollow box made from wood and covered in bronze; the hollow would have to have been filled with earth and stones before a fire could be set on the altar (otherwise the altar itself would have caught fire, being made from wood). Of course, if the text had mentioned the earth and stones, it wouldn't seem so portable, but the writer clearly didn't realise how stupid it would be to set fire to something on top of a hollow wooden box.
The altar "horns" are extensions from the corners; their purpose isn't really understood, but they may be some sort of fetish (of the religious, not sexual, sort).
"his ashes". It would be a better translation to say "its ashes". Its just "his" because "Altar" is masculine in Hebrew, and the KJV translation sometimes adds a Christian bias, here keeping the "his" to imply altar=jesus, when it clearly is just about an actual altar.
In my comment about Exodus 26, I've explained the structure of the temple, which should help you understand the last verse a bit better. Its a continuation of the sentence in the previous verse; its saying that the oil has to be kept going from evening to morning, and that the oil goes outside the curtain (which was between the two halves of the temple) - "without" is KJV English for "outside" (as opposed to "within"). In the Israelite/Jewish day-counting system, the 24 hour day is counted from DUSK not dawn, so a Jewish day begins in the evening. The "forever" clause applies to the regulation in general - basically, there must always be oil in the lamp put outside the curtain. I.e. the whole thing is just "don't let the light go out, ever".
"Shittim" = Acacia. Very common wood in ancient Levant. Cedar was the other common wood.
"cubit" = roughly the length from fingertip to elbow on a fairly tall person. There were royal cubits, and common cubits, of slightly different sizes. The hebrew word is actually "Ammah" not "Cubit"; a better translation is "Ell" (as in "to the Ell-bow"). Cubit was a standard Egyptian and Babylonian unit. 2000 Ammah is about 1km, ie. 1 Ammah is about 1/2 metre, and 1/2 yard. The Ammah used in early parts of the bible, definitely including Ezekiel, was probably the royal cubit (about 525mm); later parts of the bible use the common cubit not the royal one. In the later measurement system, the common cubit was 6 "palms", and the royal cubit worked out at 7 "palms"; originally the "palm" was larger so that the royal cubit was only 6 "palms".
Imhotep was the first engineer - he predates the Bible by a couple of thousand years.
He was also the first doctor/physician.
The Egyptians were so impressed that later generations began to call Imhotep a god.
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