Three-year Bible reading plan for 20 April 2022

King James Version (en)

Exodus, Chapter 38

¹ The altar of burnt offering, ⁸ The laver of brass, ⁹ The court, ²¹ The sum of that the people offered

¹And he made the altar of burnt offering of shittim wood: five cubits was the length thereof, and five cubits the breadth thereof; it was foursquare; and three cubits the height thereof.

²And he made the horns thereof on the four corners of it; the horns thereof were of the same: and he overlaid it with brass.

³And he made all the vessels of the altar, the pots, and the shovels, and the basons, and the fleshhooks, and the firepans: all the vessels thereof made he of brass.

⁴And he made for the altar a brasen grate of network under the compass thereof beneath unto the midst of it.

⁵And he cast four rings for the four ends of the grate of brass, to be places for the staves.

⁶And he made the staves of shittim wood, and overlaid them with brass.

⁷And he put the staves into the rings on the sides of the altar, to bear it withal; he made the altar hollow with boards.

⁸And he made the laver of brass, and the foot of it of brass, of the lookingglasses of the women assembling, which assembled at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation.

⁹And he made the court: on the south side southward the hangings of the court were of fine twined linen, an hundred cubits:

¹⁰Their pillars were twenty, and their brasen sockets twenty; the hooks of the pillars and their fillets were of silver.

¹¹And for the north side the hangings were an hundred cubits, their pillars were twenty, and their sockets of brass twenty; the hooks of the pillars and their fillets of silver.

¹²And for the west side were hangings of fifty cubits, their pillars ten, and their sockets ten; the hooks of the pillars and their fillets of silver.

¹³And for the east side eastward fifty cubits.

¹⁴The hangings of the one side of the gate were fifteen cubits; their pillars three, and their sockets three.

¹⁵And for the other side of the court gate, on this hand and that hand, were hangings of fifteen cubits; their pillars three, and their sockets three.

¹⁶All the hangings of the court round about were of fine twined linen.

¹⁷And the sockets for the pillars were of brass; the hooks of the pillars and their fillets of silver; and the overlaying of their chapiters of silver; and all the pillars of the court were filleted with silver.

¹⁸And the hanging for the gate of the court was needlework, of blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine twined linen: and twenty cubits was the length, and the height in the breadth was five cubits, answerable to the hangings of the court.

¹⁹And their pillars were four, and their sockets of brass four; their hooks of silver, and the overlaying of their chapiters and their fillets of silver.

²⁰And all the pins of the tabernacle, and of the court round about, were of brass.

²¹This is the sum of the tabernacle, even of the tabernacle of testimony, as it was counted, according to the commandment of Moses, for the service of the Levites, by the hand of Ithamar, son to Aaron the priest.

²²And Bezaleel the son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah, made all that the LORD commanded Moses.

²³And with him was Aholiab, son of Ahisamach, of the tribe of Dan, an engraver, and a cunning workman, and an embroiderer in blue, and in purple, and in scarlet, and fine linen.

²⁴All the gold that was occupied for the work in all the work of the holy place, even the gold of the offering, was twenty and nine talents, and seven hundred and thirty shekels, after the shekel of the sanctuary.

²⁵And the silver of them that were numbered of the congregation was an hundred talents, and a thousand seven hundred and threescore and fifteen shekels, after the shekel of the sanctuary:

²⁶A bekah for every man, that is, half a shekel, after the shekel of the sanctuary, for every one that went to be numbered, from twenty years old and upward, for six hundred thousand and three thousand and five hundred and fifty men.

²⁷And of the hundred talents of silver were cast the sockets of the sanctuary, and the sockets of the vail; an hundred sockets of the hundred talents, a talent for a socket.

²⁸And of the thousand seven hundred seventy and five shekels he made hooks for the pillars, and overlaid their chapiters, and filleted them.

²⁹And the brass of the offering was seventy talents, and two thousand and four hundred shekels.

³⁰And therewith he made the sockets to the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, and the brasen altar, and the brasen grate for it, and all the vessels of the altar,

³¹And the sockets of the court round about, and the sockets of the court gate, and all the pins of the tabernacle, and all the pins of the court round about.

NOTES

The shine of gold, silver, and bronze makes you squint. This brightness and richness of the tabernacle's adornment, and of modern churches as well, can embarrass an outsider. So much material wealth was spent just like that, for something unclear, instead of...

Today's passage offers us a paradoxical combination of sacred text and ledger. On the one hand, there is the description of the very altar around which people seeking an encounter with God will gather; on the other, a careful listing of all the expenses connected with the construction of the Tabernacle: how much was brought, how much was spent and on what, and how much remained.

A combination of holiness and calculation that would seem completely out of place. In fact, however, there is its own logic and deep meaning here. Today it often seems to us that God's work does not require any especially careful accounting and control: after all, this is about God, for whom nothing is too much to spare, and if so, there is no need to count costs carefully. At the same time people sometimes recall the well-known Gospel saying about unworthy servants and similar things, from which they conclude that one need not settle accounts with God, and therefore whatever has been spent has been spent, and there is no reason to be petty, whether the cost is money or labor.

The issue here, however, is not God at all, but ourselves. God has plenty of everything, and He begrudges us nothing, while we certainly cannot add anything to Him. Yet the inability to count is not listed anywhere in the Bible among the virtues. The only exception may be David's census of the people, but there they counted with a very definite aim: to make the people dependent on the state, to count everyone so that no one would escape the "eye of the state." God truly has no need for such statistics, directed toward the enslavement of a person. It is another matter to calculate the expenses for the work ahead: this not only can be done, it must be done.

If only so that later, if something is suddenly lacking, one does not end up in the position of a person who has no way to bring God's work to completion. There is also another side connected with the ability to count, calculate, and plan work, and it is already directly connected with spiritual life. The point is that the inability to count, like every state of being "not of this world" so popular among "spiritual" people, in reality testifies not so much to deep spirituality as to badly neglected looseness.

A person who is truly living a spiritual life first of all clearly recognizes the reality inside which he finds himself and in which he has to act. He usually understands perfectly well where counting is needed, and very careful counting at that, and where calculations are out of place, and he does not confuse one situation with the other. Ledgers, of course, remain in any case a very dry matter and rather tedious reading, but no person who understands what normal spiritual life is would consider them unspiritual merely because they contain nothing except what they ought to contain.

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