What makes these gold ornaments, angels, leaves, and faces different from the calf built by the people (see Exod 32)? At first glance, this describes the careful making of objects that will likewise be objects of worship. But the point is precisely that only God can be worshiped, and a person is called to use everything he has for His sake. The sanctuary is to be adorned; the most precious and valuable things are to be brought. Every object sanctified by the presence of God should be beautiful in appearance and precious. By itself this object means nothing. It merely expresses reverence and adoration before God.

The main artifact of the sanctuary located in the Tabernacle is the so-called ark of the Covenant. The ark is only a chest or small box, made in this case from light wood and gilded inside and out. In it, in the ark, the tablets were to be kept: small limestone slabs with the text of the Ten Commandments carved into them. This was the chief holy object of the Tabernacle. It was not at all like the sacred objects kept in pagan sanctuaries. Those sacred objects were thought to possess a special power, or rather, to be its conductor, the power of the deity or spirit to whom they belonged. To touch them meant to come into contact with power, for good fortune or for harm. Here, in the Tabernacle, everything was different.

For God reveals Himself to a person not as an impersonal force, though to those who do not know Him He can appear that way as well. To those who know Him, however, He usually appears not as force but as will, and moreover as good will, a will that brings love. Here artifacts are not needed, nor are sanctuaries in the pagan sense. They would not have been needed at all, and neither the Tabernacle nor the Temple would have been needed, if everyone among God's people had known how and dared to commune with God face to face, as Moses did, as Aaron did, as Abraham or Jacob did before them, or as the great prophets of Israel did after them.

In reality, however, everything turned out differently. The people needed a sanctuary in order not to meet God simply, as He would have wanted, and then God showed Moses how to arrange something like the pagan sanctuaries to which the people were accustomed. Only the chief holy thing of this sanctuary was not objects as sources of power, but the Decalogue. The matter, of course, is not the supernatural power of the slabs on which the letters were carved, or of the letters themselves.

The matter is that it is precisely the Decalogue that describes the spiritual path of a believing Yahwist, the path to God and the path after God. The tablets with the text of the Ten Commandments were only a reminder of the main thing, and this main thing itself had to take place between a person and God, in the space of relationship where alone spiritual life worthy of the name can unfold. Not everyone, of course, understood all that had been said, but the path was open. And after that each person decided for himself whether to follow this path or not.