#Exodus 26:31-37

What...the curtains?

The sacred space in the Tabernacle is marked off by the fancy curtains, made of the rarest colors - blue, crimson, and purple - and the finest weaves and designs. These are basically the doors - remember, the desert Tabernacle is a tent.
Hey remember that bit in the Ten Commandments that some people think means that you couldn’t have any images of anything anywhere in ancient Israel? Explain the depictions of the cherubs declaring the curtain in the holiest space in Israel, then. (Don’t really try, please.)
I said before that gradations of holiness in the Tabernacle are signaled by the metals used in its construction, and here’s a good example. Silver sockets for the inner curtain, copper for the outer curtain. Is it super important? No. Is it a thoughtful detail? Sure.
The inner curtain is a big deal. For all the priests other than the high priest, that’s the boundary - no one can go past that curtain and into the holy of holies. (It’ll be a while I’m afraid until we get to the circumstances of the high priest’s exception to this rule.)
The important point here is that these curtains are decidedly not decorative. They’re crucial dividers of space, holiness, and access.

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More from @JoelBaden

29 Mar
#Exodus 27:1-8

The sacrificial altar

For the center of activity in the Tabernacle, the altar doesn't get any special attention here - fewer verses devoted to it than to the court in the next section, for example. And there are aspects of it here that, well, don't matter much.
Why does it need to have a mesh grating? I don't know. It just does, okay? The poles and the hollowness - well, those are for carrying the thing, but they have no other function.
All of this just to say: what we're doing here is describing the objects in the Tabernacle - bringing them solidly into the mind of the reader. There's going to be chapters and chapters of what to do with them, especially with this one.
Read 4 tweets
25 Mar
#Exodus 25:23-30

The table

If the ark and its cover are the place where YHWH sits, the table is...well, the place where YHWH eats and drinks. Yeah, I said it.
It’s a gold table with gold drinking vessels and you’re supposed to put bread on it. Later Jewish interpretation went to great lengths to describe how the bread was to be laid out, and changed weekly, etc., but the Bible doesn’t give us any of that.
All we know is that there is supposed to be bread and wine on the table in the inner sanctum of YHWH’s dwelling place, the Tabernacle, and for sure no one else is eating and drinking in there.
Read 6 tweets
24 Mar
#Exodus 25:17-22

The cover for the ark

Or, if you’re being old-timey about it, the “mercy seat.” I find that translation funny - like, as if “mercy seat” is a known thing, and Moses should just make one. Hey, make a mercy seat. It’s, you know, not a thing.
The translation “mercy seat” comes from the notion that the Hebrew name, כפרת, comes from the same root that means “atone” (though the jump from there to “mercy” has a pretty goyish ring to me, I must admit). The idea would be that from here YHWH accepts atonement for sins.
But that isn’t what the text says, here or anywhere else either. P is pretty clear about what this thing is for: it’s the precise spot in the inner sanctum of the Tabernacle where YHWH physically exists, and from where YHWH speaks to Moses (cf. Exod 30:6; Num 7:89).
Read 8 tweets
23 Mar
#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.)
Read 8 tweets
9 Mar
#Exodus 22:15-16

So you seduced a virgin...

It’s not a coincidence that this law follows on the ones about what happens if your neighbor’s property gets damaged while in your possession. Because this law is pretty much about property damage. Just the property is the girl.
This law is the equivalent of “you broke it, you buy it” where the thing you’re breaking and buying is a person. The girl’s value is attached to her virginity. She’s worth more that way. You remove that from her, and she’s a tougher sell for her father.
(Just to be provocative for fun: the word used here for virgin, בתולה, is, you know, the word for virgin. As opposed to the other word that’s used in Isaiah 7:14.m, which, you know, doesn’t mean virgin. Okay back to our regularly scheduled programming.)
Read 7 tweets
8 Mar
#Exodus 22:6-14

Laws about evidence and testimony

The ostensible topics here have to do with what happens when you have something belonging to your neighbor in your possession, and something bad happens to it. Which is fine and all. But that’s not the really interesting part.
The basic setup is that a thief steals your neighbor’s stuff from your house. Now if the thief is caught, he pays double like normal (see 21:3). Easy. But if he’s not caught, now it’s just your word that it was stolen by someone else - rather than by you, you dirty rat.
And this is where it gets interesting. The owner doesn’t know what happened to his stuff - it was with you. You can’t prove it was stolen: the thief got away. The owner has every right to claim compensation from you, but it wasn’t your fault; you weren’t negligent.
Read 16 tweets

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