Exodus 27

Will our religion bear examination? and are we more careful to approve our hearts to God, than our characters to men? For notwithstanding all our imperfections, this state of mind is in the sight of God of great price.—The hypocrite is the reverse of all this; he keeps up a specious appearance before men, but he shrinks from examination; for “his inward part is very wickedness;” and God knows it.—Thus also the Christian’s comfort and his inheritance are not an outside show of mirth and prosperity, covering an aching heart, and a soul doomed to destruction; but an inward sweetness and peace unobserved of men, and a glorious inheritance, reserved within the vail. Nay, the mean appearance of the church, and of the Christian, is often a security from persecution and temptation.—As every part of this spiritual building of God, in subserviency to his power and love, conduces to the stability of the whole, let us consider how much it behooves us to “endeavour to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace:”

Let us watch against discontent, envy, ambition, and contention; and, each in his proper place, study to serve the common interests of genuine Christianity.—J. T. Scott. Chap. XVII. Ver. 1—21. Furniture of the Tabernacle.—Of what vast importance, in true religion, must the Person, the priesthood, and the sacrifice of the Son of God be, when they are forced upon our attention in such a variety of types and representations!—He indeed is our prophet, and we must welcome and submit to his teaching; our King, and we must willingly obey him; our Example, and we must imitate him: but he is also our Altar, our Priest, our Sacrifice, our Mediator; and we have neither been truly taught by him, nor have we rendered him any genuine obedience, till we have learned to come to the Father, as lost sinners, through him, the Way, the Truth, and the Life; to draw all our sufficiency from his fulness, as the Fountain of grace; and to rely on his merits, as the Foundation of our hope.—We have abundant cause to bless our God, that we are blessed the enclosure of his visible church, and favoured with the means of grace: let us not however rest in outward profession, but be very earnest and diligent, to be found of the number of those who “truly have fellowship with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.” We should also recollect, that even the Scriptures will not prove effectual to enlighten our minds, in those things which belong to eternal salvation, without the unction of the Holy Spirit, communicated to us through that great High-Priest, of whom Aaron and his sons were types, and who “walketh amidst his golden candlesticks.”

But at the same time we must consider, that ministers, by opening and applying the Scriptures, and preaching the gospel continually; and private Christians, in performing the duties of their several stations; and all, by their fervent and frequent prayers: are instrumental in diffusing the divine light in this dark world. Let us then diligently tend the lamp of the sacred Scriptures, that we may walk in the light ourselves and communicate it to all around us. And may the Lord send forth many able and faithful ministers, to diffuse the light throughout the earth: for, blessed be his name, it is not now confined to the sanctuary in Israel, but is intended to lighten the gentiles in every part of the world.—T.° Scott.

Notes on the verses

Ver. 7. Thou shalt make curtains.—Of these there were four sets; 1. Of fine linen. 2. Of goat’s hair, (a sort of camblet.) 3. Of rams’ skins dyed red; and, 4. Of badgers’ skins; which was the outward covering, and rendered the whole impervious to the rain.

Ver. 14. Rams’ skins.—(Oroth adim, meoddamim, literally, the skins of red rams.) It is a fact attested by many respectable travellers, that in the Levant, sheep are often met with having red or violet coloured fleeces. Almost all ancient writers speak of the same thing. Homer describes the rams of Polyphemus as having a violet coloured fleece; and Pliny, Aristotle, and others, mention the same. From facts of this kind, it is very probable, that the fable of the golden fleece had its origin.

— Badgers’ skins.—Oroth techah ancient versions have taken to be the name of a skin; which nearly all the colour; though they differ very much with tended: the LXX., Vulgate, and Coptic, have skins dyed of a violet colour; the Syriac, azure; and the Arabic, black; and Bochart contends for the hyacinthus, a very deep blue. It is more probable, however, that it denotes an animal; for, as Dr. Geddes remarks, had the sacred writer meant to express only a variety of colour, he would hardly have repeated oroth, skins, after meoddamim, red, inch. xxv. 5. It probably signifies the dolphin, as the Arabic tuchus, and auchas also denote.”]—Bagster.

Ver. 29. Overlay the boards with gold.—That is, with thin beaten gold, resembling our leaf gold, but probably much thicker.

Ver. 31. Thou shalt make a vail (or veil).—This was a large curtain, which divided the two parts of the tabernacle and temple. This was rent at the death of Christ, thereby opening a way to heaven, (Hebrews 9:8, 24); after, signifies but (Matthew 27:51).—The word taches, often used in this sense, means tons, or clasps.

Ver. 32. Their hooks of gold.—Waveyhem, which we translate their hooks, is rendered by the LXX. kephalides, and by the Vulgate, capita, capitals. Hence Calmet contends, 1. That if Moses does not mean the capitals of the pillars by this word, he mentions them nowhere else; and it would seem strange, that while he describes them with so much exactness, that he should not mention the capitals; or that pillars, every way so correctly formed, should have been destitute of this necessary ornament.

2. As Moses was commanded to make the 1cavim of the pillars, and their fillets, of silver, ((Exodus 27:10-11).) and the awavim of the pillars of the vail of gold ((Exodus 36:36).) and that 1775 shekels were employed in making them, overlaying their chapiters, rasheyhem, their heads, and filleting them, (ch. xxxviii. 28.) it is more reasonable to suppose that all this is spoken of the capitals of pillars, than of any kind of hooks, especially as hooks are mentioned under the word taches or clasps.—Bagster.

Ver. 36. Hangings, &c.—[This may be termed the first vail, as it occupied the door or entrance to the tabernacle: the vail that separated the Holy of Holies is called the second vail, ((Hebrews 9:3).) Morier, describing the tent of a chief of the Bedouins, says, “It was composed of a wooden frame of circular laths, which were fixed on the ground, and then covered over with large felts, that were fastened down by a cord, ornamented by tassels of various colours. A curtain curiously worked by the women, with coarse needle-work of various colours, was suspended over the door. In the king of Persia’s tents, magnificent perdahs, or hangings of needle-work, are suspended, as well as on the doors of the great mosques in Turkey.”]—Bagster.

Chap. XXVII. Ver. 1. An altar of Shittim wood.—Of this wood, see note on (Exodus 25:10). Taking the cubit at about twenty-one inches, (see note on (Genesis 6:13).) this altar must be nearly nine feet square, and above five feet high.

Ver. 2. The horns of it upon the four corners.—To these horns it was customary to tie the sacrifices. (Psalms 118:27). The altars of the heathen were also generally formed with horns, and sometimes with the horns of animals sacrificed.—Orient. Lit. No. 219.

Ver. 4. Make for it a grate.—Calmet supposes this altar to have been a sort of box covered with brass plates, on the top of which was a grating, to supply the fire with air, and permit the ashes to fall through on the pan below. The grating on each side is so sloped toward the centre.

Ver. 9. The court of the tabernacle was formed by curtains hung on pillars; it was nearly sixty yards in length, and half as wide; it was also nearly three yards high, admitting the tabernacle, on each side, to be seen above it.

Ver. 20. Pure oil.—[That is, such oil as could be easily expressed from the olives, after they had been bruised in a mortar; and which is much purer than that obtained after the olives are put under the press. Columella, who is a legitimate judge in such matters, says, that the oil which flowed out of the fruit either spontaneously, or with little application of the force of the press, was of a much finer flavour than what was obtained otherwise.]—Bagster.

—To cause the lamp to burn (Hebrew, to ascend up) always.—That is, from evening till morning.—Josephus (Ant. 1. iii. c. 9.) says, that the whole of the seven lamps burned all night; and that in the morning four were extinguished, and three burned the whole of the day. Such might have been the practice in his time; but it appears sufficiently evident from ch. xxx. 8. and (1 Samuel 3:3). that they were anciently extinguished in the morning. The temple of Vesta, where fire was kept perpetually burning, seems to have been formed on the model of the Tabernacle; and from this the followers of Zerdusht, or Zoroaster, appear to have derived their doctrine of the perpetual fire, which they still worship as an emblem of the Deity. In the very ancient temple of Hercules, at Gades, now Cadiz, in Spain, a perpetual fire was kept burning on their altars.]—Bagster.