The Tabernacle and Its Furniture by John Kitto
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Introduction
When the Lord had redeemed His people with a high hand from the hard bondage and the polluting idolatries of Egypt, it seemed right, in His wisdom, that the allegiance and worship they were bound to render to Him, should be fixed and embodied in forms of solemn ritual service, which were also to serve as “shadows of good things to come,” and which have since come to us in Christ. But as the condition of this people was to remain for a time unsettled, and as it was seen that they would have to sustain a purifying probation of forty years’ wandering in the desert before they attained to fixed abodes, it became necessary that some of the conditions and forms of this new service should be suited to that mode of life. A temple of stone was, for instance, impossible. It would either have compelled the abandonment of the migrations essential to the subsistence of their flocks and herds; or, maintaining that mode of life, would have constrained them to relinquish the sustenance which their faith derived from the visible presence among them of their Divine King in his holy habitation; and the necessity of occasionally repairing thereto, for periodical religious services, must very seriously have interfered with the movements which the wandering life exacts. It therefore became necessary that the seat of worship should, like their own habitations, be a tent or tabernacle, capable of being taken speedily to pieces and carried from place to place; and that its utensils should, like their own, be such as might be easily removed.
The sacred fabric, as described in the Book of Exodus, fully realizes these conditions. It was essentially a tent; yet it being desirable that it should possess as substantial a character as might consist with portability, it had more solid parts than a tent usually possesses. Its framework of boards, set in metal sockets, gave it something of the character of a booth or house, while the curtains with which the whole was covered and overhung, preserved to it the general appearance of a tent. Let us view its arrangements more closely.
Court of the Tabernacle
A large area was left for the holy edifice in the very midst of the vast encampment of the hosts of Israel. This area was lined on all sides by the tents of the priests as the immediate servants and officers of the Most High King. In the center of this area was an oblong enclosure, extended east and west, within which—not in the center but towards the west end—stood the sacred tent, in front of which, within the enclosure, was the altar of burnt offerings and the laver for ablution.
The Tabernacle in the Wilderness
and the Plan of the Encampment,
Exodus 40; Numbers 2
(Click on the picture to enlarge it)
More particularly, the enclosure of the Tabernacle, called “the Court of the Tabernacle,” was one hundred cubits long by fifty cubits broad. It was on all sides surrounded, to the height of five cubits, with hangings made of linen. These were suspended from silver rods which reached from one column to another, and rested on them. These columns were, on the east and west sides, ten, and on the north and south sides, twenty, in number. They were apparently made of acacia (shittim) wood, overlaid with brass. Their chapiters were of silver; and to prevent their being injured by the moisture
