Thread by @JoelBaden

#Exodus 39:1-31

Making the priestly garments

This section is basically a near-verbatim fulfillment of the instructions from Exod 28, which isn’t so surprising. What’s interesting here is this repeated phrase, “as YHWH had commanded Moses,” which shows up seven times.

What makes this otherwise pretty standard phrase interesting here is that in all of the Tabernacle construction preceding this, that phrase had appeared only once - and that in the late section we just read, in the summary statement of 38:22.

Suddenly it appears after basically every subsection in this chapter - and seven times, which is a number that we’re trained as biblical readers to sit up and take notice of. (It doesn’t always mean something. But it is a semi-regular structuring device, as probably here.)

And what weird placement for this too, no? I mentioned last time that the total of all the gold used in the preceding section seemed to ignore all the gold needed for this one. But maybe that’s because this section was tacked on after? The textual history here is...muddled.

Certainly it’s hard to explain why suddenly they’re doing everything “as YHWH had commanded Moses” when it comes to the priestly garments but not, say, the ark. It looks like someone filling in the gap where the garments should have been made and emphasizing their correctness.