No Devil in These Details

It is a mystery to me why the Old Testament tabernacle is studied by so few. Bible-believing Bible-thumping Christians are truly illiterate with respect to the tabernacle of the wilderness. Sure, we wade through the latter half of Exodus and Leviticus when we read through our Bibles on our read-your-Bible-in-a-year programs. We feel a sense of relief when we get to the end like it is something to endure and not something to enjoy in study. It’s kind of like genealogies in say, the first 11 chapters or so of First Chronicles. We read through them, maybe looking for a familiar name, or we may even look up a few in a Bible dictionary to see some of the name defined. We may even go so far as replace the name with its definition to see if it makes sense or not. But we do not spend time in study. We study the New Testament. We spend time on many stories in the Old. The creation story is studied as if it took up most of the Old Testament. The 10 Commandments are studied. We feel a certain connection to the 10 Commandments – they make sense to us, even in this day. In the book of Exodus, the 10 Commandments come a little before the instruction to build the tabernacle. There is a reason for this order, but we don’t feel any kind of connection to the tabernacle.

I developed this top-10 list. The top ten reasons that the tabernacle is not studied. These are based on personal observations – my personal observations ranked in reverse order. There is no Biblical basis for this list or its order. You may not agree; that’s okay.

The Top Ten Reasons that the Tabernacle is Not Studied:

Reason Number 10

The Number 10 reason that the tabernacle is not studied today is because it is boring. Details make it boring. Many details are given in its design and and seem to repeated in the construction. Let’s look at a couple quick examples:

The instruction for the tabernacle proper:

And thou shalt make the tabernacle [with] ten curtains of twined byssus, and blue, and purple, and scarlet: with cherubim of artistic work shalt thou make them. The length of one curtain shall be twenty-eight cubits, and the breadth of one curtain four cubits -- one measure for all the curtains. Five of the curtains shall be coupled one to another, and [the other] five curtains coupled one to another. And thou shalt make loops of blue on the edge of the one curtain at the end of the coupling; and likewise shalt thou make [them] in the edge of the outermost curtain in the other coupling. Fifty loops shalt thou make in the one curtain, and fifty loops shalt thou make at the end of the curtain in the other coupling: the loops shall be opposite to one another. And thou shalt make fifty clasps of gold, and couple the curtains together with the clasps, that the tabernacle may be one [whole]. Ex. 26:1-6

So much detail, so few verses. We are given sizes, numbers of curtains, materials of construction, colors, coupling methods, even the number of couplings.

Another example: Instructions for the construction of the laver are given in Ex.30: Thou shalt also make a laver of copper, and its stand of copper, for washing; and thou shalt put it between the tent of meeting and the altar, and shalt put water in it. The instructions as they were followed a few chapters later: And he made the laver of copper, and its stand of copper, of the mirrors of the crowds of women who crowded before the entrance of the tent of meeting. Ex. 38:8. Details. We are not only told what it is made of, copper, we are also told the source of the material and who offered it. But, interestingly, we are not given the dimensions for the laver.

There is a reason for each detail given. There is a reason for each detail omitted. Boring? Maybe. But when we look into the details, you won’t find the devil in them…you’ll see some of the many facets of Jesus Christ.