Thread by @JoelBaden

#Exodus 25:10-17

The ark

Don’t get excited - this isn’t the ark of the covenant. Well, it is, sort of. But it isn’t. Let me explain (briefly).

P will never call it the ark of the covenant, because in P there’s no covenant here, and no covenant gets put inside the ark. That’s only in D, and that’s the only function of D’s ark: to hold the tablets of the Decalogue in the sanctuary.

This ark only seems like the ark of the covenant because it’s what we picture when we think of it (thanks, Indiana Jones): gold, with the poles extending out to carry the thing. Not the simple wooden box of D. (That’s the ark of a carpenter. Sorry, couldn’t resist.)

All we know about the ark (from this passage at least) is that it’s supposed to hold the edut. What’s the edut? It’s translated as “testimony,” as “covenant,” as “pact” (ESV, NRSV, NJPS, respectively). The last two are misleading, equating edut and the Decalogue, seemingly.

It’s a classic case of canonical reading interfering with our ability to read the sources independently. P has no Decalogue and no covenant here at Sinai, nor is any pact made. All Moses gets on the mountain is a blueprint for the Tabernacle and the edut.

Philologically, “testimony” isn’t too bad, as it reflects the same Hebrew root, עד, meaning “testimony” or “witness.” And that’s not an unreasonable thing to give Moses: some sort of item attesting to this moment, to the divine theophany and encounter.

But - and here’s the sad ending - that’s the entirety of what we can say about it. No one knows what the edut was imagined to be here in P (and it doesn’t appear anywhere else). I know what it isn’t - it isn’t stuff from other stories - but I don’t know what it is, exactly.

In any case, though the ark does hold the edut, that’s not its main purpose in the Tabernacle, as we will soon see. The point here is that there are multiple arks imagined in the Pentateuch, and we should keep them straight rather than trying to conflate them into one.