Text for the Week: An Opportunity for Generosity

Scripture: Exodus 35:4-19

⁴ Moses said to the whole Israelite community, This is what the Lord has commanded: ⁵ Collect gift offerings for the Lord from all of you. Whoever freely wants to give should bring the Lord’s gift offerings: gold, silver, and copper; ⁶ blue, purple, and deep red yarns; fine linen; goats’ hair; ⁷ rams’ skins dyed red; beaded leather; acacia wood; ⁸ the oil for the light; spices for the anointing oil and for the sweet-smelling incense; ⁹ gemstones; and gems for setting in the priest’s vest and in the priest’s chest pendant.

¹⁰ All of you who are skilled in crafts should come forward and make everything that the Lord has commanded: ¹¹ the dwelling, its tent and its covering, its clasps, its boards, its bars, its posts, and its bases, ¹² the chest with its poles and its cover, the veil for a screen, ¹³ the table with its poles and all its equipment, the bread of the presence, ¹⁴ the lampstand for light with its equipment and its lamps, the oil for the light, ¹⁵ the incense altar with its poles, the anointing oil and the sweet-smelling incense, the entrance screen for the dwelling’s entrance, ¹⁶ the altar for entirely burned offerings with its copper grate, its poles, and all its equipment, the washbasin with its stand, ¹⁷ the courtyard’s drapes, its posts, and its bases, and the screen for the courtyard gate, ¹⁸ the dwelling’s tent pegs and the courtyard’s tent pegs, and their cords, ¹⁹ the woven clothing for ministering in the sanctuary, and the holy clothes for Aaron the priest and his sons for their service as priests.

Theme- God wants the people to see giving as an opportunity not an obligation

Questions

1. Why is there no mandatory giving to the Tabernacle?
2. Where were the Israelites supposed to have gathered the wealth necessary for building the Tabernacle?
3. What is the purpose of the Tabernacle and why was it important for the Israelites in the wilderness?
4. How would the construction of the Tabernacle impacted the community of Israel as they were raising support and building it?

Helpful Information

Related texts: 2 Corinthians 9:1-8

The tabernacle was not inherently a place of communal worship, but it was meant to be a symbol of unity among the people of Israel.

The term for gift refers to something specifically dedicated to sacred use.

The tabernacle is a temporary dwelling for God and not meant to represent a permanent home.

The Tabernacle is described from the inside out beginning with the most sacred pieces and working outward. This represents how the Tabernacle is about God and not the people.

Building the Tabernacle is the ultimate climax of the Book of Exodus because building the Tabernacle displays the transition from serving Pharaoh to serving God.

For more background see my video here.

Reflection

Many Americans seem to have difficulty understanding the construction of Exodus, it seems strange that the book ends with fifteen chapters on the building of the Tabernacle (and the account of the Golden Calf). We are used to the Charlton Heston retelling of The Ten Commandments where the story ends with the dramatic crossing of the Sea and the Covenant. This is a more action packed ending that feeds our culture and completes our understanding of the story that Israel is freed from oppression. But the story of the Exodus is not simply Israel freed from slavery to Pharaoh, the story is about Israel able to freely and properly worship God. We often simplify this theme to an ethnic group being able to pray to the God they choose to identify with—if we are religious we say the true God who spoke to them. But even this oversimplifies what is happening in these chapters.

Exodus began with Israel in slavery to Egypt and Moses petitioning Pharaoh to allow Israel to worship their God. Though we often think of worship as prayers and singing the Hebrew and Greek words for worship had different meanings. The words used in the Bible for worship have at their core meanings that relate to service and giving. For the people of Israel to properly worship God they had to serve God in a tangible way. Worship limited to daily prayers or praise songs was not complete, Israelites had to tangibly serve God in order to truly worship. This is one of the reasons for sacrifices, they are a reminder of the tangible service that one owed God as part of the community. The sacrifices had a variety of overlapping meanings and one was as a symbol of working to for God in offering a ceremonial meal. The sacrifice was the work one could do as an offering (worship) to God, who had rescued Israel.

Exodus ends with an extended call for and description of Israel offering their first communal worship (service) to God. Building the Tabernacle offers the Israelites their first opportunity to worship as they contrast the place which God will use as a temporary dwelling to meet with humanity.  

In this passage Moses is giving the people their first opportunity to truly worship God as a newly formed covenant people. They are presented with the plan of a structure where God will be present to the people, and they are given the opportunity to contribute to it. There is no obligation for the people to contribute, no minimum they had to meet, the vision is simply presented to them. Here we should take a minute to notice the list of materials the people are to donate, these are not common building materials. Everything about this tabernacle is meant to be ornate, the construction would have been luxuriant and costly. It is justified to ask where recently freed slaves living nomadic lives in the Sinai desert would acquire the luxuries specified in the list of building materials. What would these families have been in possession of, what might they have needed to trade for, and from whom could they obtain the goods? These are good questions but they should at some point lead us to the deeper question what would such sacrifices mean to the people and why were they so eager to participate in the giving that Moses would collect far more materials than were needed on the project?

The only rationale I can come up with is that the Israelites had a twofold motivation behind their giving. First, they were profoundly excited to have the opportunity to show service to God that they were willing to give to this project and even sacrifice to see it completed. And second, they saw the immense value this Tabernacle would have for the community. The Tabernacle was not simply about giving the Israelites a place to bring animals that were to be sacrificed, they could do that elsewhere. The Tabernacle was a centralized place for the community to witness God and draw together as God’s people. This opportunity was a way for the people to deepen their service to God through giving and an opportunity to provide for the benefit of the community. The people of God understood this opportunity and seized it, and this is a perpetual credit to them that they were willing to give and give sacrificially to promote communion with God in the world.