2And Moses called Bezalel and Oholiab and every wise-hearted man in whose heart the LORD had given wisdom, everyone whose heart moved him, to approach the task to do it. 3And they took from before Moses all the donation that the Israelites had brought for the task of the holy work to do it, and they on their part brought more freewill gifts morning after morning. 4And all the wise people who were doing the holy task came, each man from his task that he was doing. 5And they said to Moses, saying, “The people are bringing too much for the work of the task that the LORD charged to do.” 6And Moses charged, and they sent word through the camp, saying, “Let each man and woman do no further task for the holy donation,” and the people were held back from bringing. 7And the task was enough to do all the task, and more.
8And every wise-hearted man among the doers of the task made the Tabernacle—ten panels of twisted linen, and indigo and purple and crimson, two cherubim, designer’s work, they made them. 9The length of the one panel twenty-eight cubits and a width four cubits to the panel, a single measure for all the panels. 10And they joined the five panels one to another, five panels they joined one to another. 11And they made indigo loops along the edge of the outermost panel in the set, and thus they did on the outermost panel in the other set. 12Fifty loops they made in the one panel, and fifty loops they made in the outermost panel which was in the other set, the loops opposite one another. 13And they made fifty golden clasps and joined the panels to one another with the clasps, and the Tabernacle became one whole. 14And they made goat-hair panels for a tent over the Tabernacle, eleven panels they made them. 15The length of the one panel, thirty cubits, and a width of four cubits to the panel, a single measure for the eleven panels. 16And they joined five of the panels by themselves and six of the panels by themselves. 17And they made fifty loops along the edge of the outermost panel in the set, and fifty loops along the edge of the outermost panel in the other set. 18And they made fifty bronze clasps to join the tent to become one whole. 19And they made a covering for the tent of reddened ram skins and a covering of ocher-dyed skins above. 20And they made boards for the Tabernacle of acacia wood, upright. 21Ten cubits the length of the board, and a cubit and a half the width of the single board. 22Two tenons for the one board linked to each other, thus they did for all the boards of the Tabernacle. 23And they made the boards for the Tabernacle, twenty boards for the southern end. 24And forty silver sockets they made beneath the twenty boards, two sockets beneath the one board for its two tenons and two sockets beneath the one board for its two tenons. 25And in the other side of the Tabernacle at the northern end, twenty boards. 26And their forty silver sockets, two sockets beneath the one board and two sockets beneath the one board. 27And at the rear of the Tabernacle to the west they made six boards. 28And they made two boards for the corners of the Tabernacle at the rear. 29And they matched below, and together they ended at the top inside the one ring, thus they did for the two of them, at the two corners. 30And there were eight boards with their silver sockets, sixteen sockets, two sockets beneath the one board. 31And they made five crossbars of acacia wood for the boards of the one side of the Tabernacle. 32And five crossbars for the boards of the other side of the Tabernacle, and five crossbars for the boards of the Tabernacle at the rear to the west. 33And they made the central crossbar to shoot through the boards from end to end. 34And the boards they overlaid with gold, and their rings they made of gold, housings for the crossbars, and they overlaid the crossbars with gold. 35And they made the curtain of indigo and purple and crimson and twisted linen, designer’s work they made it, with cherubim. 36And they made for it four acacia posts and overlaid them with gold, their hooks gold, and they cast for them four silver sockets. 37And they made a screen for the entrance of the tent, indigo and purple and crimson and twisted linen, embroiderer’s work, 38and its five posts and its hooks, and they overlaid their tops and their bands with gold, and their five sockets with bronze.
CHAPTER 36 NOTES
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3. freewill gifts. The Hebrew nedavah (here a collective noun), which was mentioned in the previous chapter, 35:29, is derived from the same verb nadav that occurs repeatedly in the references to each man’s heart “urging” him to offer a gift. In this passage, the theme of Israelite generosity for the construction of the Tabernacle as a resounding reversal of the ill-considered donations for the Golden Calf is given a climactic flourish: the donations go over the top (verse 5) and the people have to be “held back” (verse 6) from giving further.
6. do no further task. They are actually not “doing”—that is the responsibility of the craftsmen—but giving. “Task” (melaʾkhah) here is extended in meaning to refer to the materials necessary for the carrying out of the task that the people bring. That is clearly the meaning of the first occurrence of “task” in the next verse.
8–38. The text now launches upon one of its most extravagant deployments of verbatim repetition. This particular segment corresponds precisely to 26:1–32, the only notable difference being that the imperative verbs of the instruction passage are converted into past verbs for the implementation passage, with the obvious implication that God’s directions for the construction of the Tabernacle are now carried out with scrupulous fidelity to every single detail by Bezalel and his work crews. In biblical narrative—these lists scarcely qualify as that—virtually every small swerve from verbatim repetition in repeated passages is a node of new meaning, but here the variance between the two versions is quite marginal and is by no means a vehicle of signification: what really matters is the repetition itself, the fact that the Tabernacle is now faithfully assembled in all its prescribed splendid details. It should be noted that all of the verbs for making in this passage, beginning with “they made them” in verse 8, are in the singular in the Hebrew. The singular is presumably used because the writer has in mind “every wise-hearted man” who is engaged in the building. Hebrew usage slips back and forth easily from plural to singular in such cases. The initial “made” in verse 8 is in the plural, but the end of the verse uses a singular. English being more hidebound by logic, this translation continues with the plural.