1And he made the burnt-offering altar of acacia wood, five cubits its length and five cubits its width, square, and three cubits its height. 2And he made its horns on its four corners, from the same piece were its horns, and he overlaid it with bronze. 3And he made all the vessels of the altar, and the pails and the shovels and the basins and the flesh-hooks and the fire-pans, all its vessels he made of bronze. 4And he made a meshwork bronze grating for the altar beneath its ledge from below halfway up. 5And he cast four rings at the four corners of the bronze grating as housings for the poles. 6And he made the poles of acacia wood and overlaid them with bronze. 7And he brought the poles through the rings on the sides of the altar to carry it, hollow boarded he made it.
8And he made the laver of bronze and its stand of bronze from the mirrors of the women who flocked to the entrance of the Tent of Meeting.
9And he made the court for the southern side, the hangings of the court were twisted linen, a hundred cubits. 10Their posts twenty and their sockets twenty, of bronze. The hooks of the posts and their bands were silver. 11And for the northern side, a hundred cubits, their posts twenty and their sockets twenty, of bronze. The hooks of the posts and their bands were silver. 12And for the western side, hangings of fifty cubits. Their posts ten and their sockets ten, the hooks of the posts and their bands were silver. 13And to the very east, fifty cubits, 14hangings of fifteen cubits to the flank, their posts three and their sockets three. 15And for the other flank on each side of the gate of the court hangings of fifteen cubits, their posts three and their sockets three. 16All the hangings of the court all around were twisted linen. 17And the sockets for the posts were bronze, the hooks of the posts and their bands silver and the overlay of their tops silver, and they were banded with silver, all the posts of the court. 18And the screen of the gate of the court was embroiderer’s work, indigo and purple and crimson and twisted linen. And it was twenty cubits in length and a height in the width of five cubits over against the hangings of the court. 19And their posts four and their sockets four, of bronze. Their hooks were silver and the overlay of their tops and their bands silver. 20And all the pegs for the Tabernacle and for the court all around were bronze.
21These are the reckonings of the Tabernacle, the Tabernacle of the Covenant, that were reckoned by the word of Moses, the service of the Levites in the hand of Ithamar son of Aaron the priest. 22And Bezalel son of Uri son of Hur from the tribe of Judah made all that the LORD had charged Moses. 23And with him was Oholiab son of Ahisamach from the tribe of Dan, wood carver and designer and embroiderer in indigo and in purple and in crimson and in linen. 24All the gold that was fashioned for the task in every task of the sanctuary, the elevation-offering gold was twenty-nine talents or seven hundred thirty shekels by the sancturary shekel. 25And the silver reckoned from the community was a hundred talents or one thousand seven hundred seventy-five shekels by the sanctuary shekel. 26A beqa to the head, half a shekel by the sanctuary shekel for each who underwent the reckoning from twenty years old and above, for six hundred thousand and three thousand five hundred and fifty. 27And the hundred talents of silver were for casting the sockets of the sanctuary and the sockets of the curtain, a hundred sockets for a hundred talents, a talent for a socket. 28And from the one thousand seven hundred seventy-five shekels he made hooks for the posts and overlaid their tops and banded them. 29And the elevation-offering bronze was seventy talents or two thousand four hundred shekels. 30And he made with it the sockets for the entrance of the Tent of Meeting and the bronze altar and the bronze grating that belongs to it and all the furnishings of the altar, 31and the sockets of the court all around and the sockets for the gate of the court, and all the pegs of the Tabernacle and all the pegs of the court all around.
CHAPTER 38 NOTES
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1–7. These verses correspond to Exodus 27:1–8 from the instruction passages.
8. the mirrors of the women who flocked to the entrance. The verb here, tsavʾu, can mean either “to perform service,” as in an army, tsavʾa, or “to make up a multitude or crowd,” as in the epithet for the stars, tsevʾa hashamayim, the “host,” or array, of the heavens. Although most modern interpreters opt for the sense of service, there are two difficulties with that construction. The cult was administered by males, and there is scant evidence of a quasisacerdotal function performed outside the sanctuary by women. And if there really were such a group of women doing some sort of sacred service, their numbers would have had to be relatively limited, whereas the sanctuary required large quantities of bronze (see verse 28) donated by the masses. It thus seems more plausible to imagine crowds of devoted women flocking to the entrance of the Tent of Meeting, where they would not have been permitted to go in. (Compare 1 Samuel 2:22, in which the same verb is used.) Mirrors in the ancient world were made of polished bronze, not glass, and were an Egyptian luxury item. Several medieval commentators note that the very objects used by the women for the purposes of vanity, or in the cultivation of their sexual attractiveness, are here dedicated to sacred ends. This verse complements the emphasis on the prominent role of the women in the donations that was brought forth in Exodus 35:22.
9–20. These verses correspond to 27:9–19 with some variation in the wording.
18. and a height in the width of five cubits. This is an odd way of describing the height. One suspects that “in the width” (one word in the Hebrew) might be a scribal error, although there are no ancient versions without it.
21. These are the reckonings. The term pequdim, immediately followed by the cognate passive verb puqad, “reckoned,” is difficult to translate because the verbal stem p-q-d covers so many senses in biblical Hebrew. It means “to count,” “to inventory,” “to take a census,” “to single out,” “to pay special attention,” “to make a reckoning,” and more. The most relevant sense in the present context would be “inventory,” but Hebrew idiom prefers to use general terms for technical senses, and this translation honors that preference. When an inventory is transferred from objects to people (verse 26), it becomes a census. What is involved here are two categories of donation—freewill gifts and a poll tax of a silver beqaʿ to the head. The poll tax serves simultaneously as a means of extracting silver needed for the sanctuary and as an instrument for counting heads, or taking a census.
by the word of Moses. Literally, “by the mouth.”
24. twenty-nine talents or seven hundred thirty shekels. The conjunction waw here and in what follows does not have its usual sense of “and” but rather “or” since the weight in shekels is manifestly provided as an equivalent—presumably, more familiar to the audience—of the weight in talents. As earlier, it is stipulated that this is the heavier sanctuary-weight shekel and not the mercantile shekel.
26. for six hundred thousand and three thousand five hundred and fifty. The previously given round number of 600,000 males is now made more precise in an enhancement of the effect of exact census of the present context. The “for” (lE) that prefixes the number may be dictated by the beginning of the sentence: a silver beqaʿ is paid for each head of the 603,550 males.