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Joel Baden

22 Apr, 9 tweets, 2 min read

#Exodus 31:12-17

Sabbath

Why does P feel the need to put the sabbath law here? (We might actually ask why P has a sabbath law at all, if we were being cheeky, but I’ll let it slide.) But why here, in the Tabernacle blueprint section?

The rabbinic-style answer would be that here all Israel is working at building the Tabernacle, so they need to know to stop on the seventh day. Which is also why the categories of work forbidden on Shabbat are aligned with those needed to build the Tabernacle.

There’s something to that - at least, the sense that this is an all-Israel venture, and the sabbath is too, while the ritual laws to come in Leviticus are almost entirely about individuals.

There’s also the notion that here on Sinai YHWH is systematically identifying all the sacred things for the new post-Exodus era: space, objects, people, and, here, time. Everything קדש, “holy, sacred, set apart,” is labeled as such now.

Of course, the sabbath was already designated as קדש back in Genesis 2. The new information here is what Israel is supposed to do with that designation. The answer, it seems, is to not work. But I don’t find that super satisfying, I must admit. At least, it feels incomplete.

As I think I may have mentioned before (in the Decalogue discussion), the sabbath wasn’t just a day of rest. It was a day of ritual activity. Offerings, ritual meals, etc. (see Isa 1:13; 66:23; Hos 2:13; Neh 10:34). P doesn’t say it outright, but any reader would know it.

Not working isn’t the point: not working so that you can devote your attention and activity to the worship of YHWH, that’s the point. (And worship in ancient Israel always = sacrifice.) Moreover, all sacred things belong to the sanctuary sphere. Even time.

Profaning the sabbath - working on it - is essentially showing disrespect to YHWH, whose time that is, and who demands attention during his allotted day of the week. No working, no thinking about money. Just worship.

And so another reason this law is here and not elsewhere: because the sabbath belongs fundamentally to the Tabernacle. And while the offerings described in Leviticus may happen on an ad hoc basis, the clock on this one starts as soon as the Tabernacle is inaugurated.

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More from @JoelBaden

Joel Baden

@JoelBaden

21 Apr

#Exodus 31:1-11

Bezalel

This is really just a long-ish section of YHWH telling Moses that a couple of dudes, Bezalel and Oholiab, are going to be the lead craftsmen for the Tabernacle, with help from whoever is similarly gifted. My question is: who is Bezalel?

I don’t mean in the narrative world: we get his full two-generation genealogy and his tribal affiliation, and we know what his function in the story is. I mean more like, where did he come from in the tradition?

He’s known only to P, which is sensible, since only P has the whole Tabernacle thing. But where does P get the name, the genealogy, the tribal affiliation? Is it just invented entirely? Is it some old tradition among the priests? Was the name written in graffiti on the altar?

Read 5 tweets

Joel Baden

@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

Joel Baden

@JoelBaden

28 Mar

#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.

Read 5 tweets

Joel Baden

@JoelBaden

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

Joel Baden

@JoelBaden

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

Joel Baden

@JoelBaden

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

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