Thread by @JoelBaden

#Exodus 37:1-38:20

Bezalel gets to work

Here we have the long description of everything that Bezalel, master craftsman, made for the Tabernacle. Which is to say, all the good stuff, basically in descending order of awesomeness. (Okay, holiness.)

He starts with the ark, which resides in the innermost sanctum; then the table and the menorah and the incense altar, which are in the chamber just outside the ark. All of these are made of gold, which signals their status and sanctity.

Then it's on to the copper stuff outside the sanctum, in the courtyard: the altar for burnt offerings and the wash basin. And here we encounter what is decidedly one of the weirdest details in the whole thing: the wash basin and its stand are made from...women's mirrors?

I don't have a pithy explanation for this. Don't have a long-winded one, either. It's a mystery: who are these women who served - maybe? the word is the same one as to array for war, צבא - at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting? No clue. They're mentioned here, and never again.

And finally, Bezalel makes the courtyard itself, which seems like a lot of work for one dude, but what do I know, I'm in the humanities.