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...
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.
38 Here is an account,
and the laver, Exo 38:8.
38:1 The altar of burnt - offering - On this all their sacrifices were offered. Christ was himself the altar to his own sacrifice of atonement, and so he is to all our sacrifices of acknowledgment. We must have an eye to him in offering them, as God hath in accepting them.
38:8 This laver signified the provision that is made in the gospel for cleansing our souls from the pollution of sin by the merit of Christ, that we may be fit to serve the holy God in holy duties. This is here said to be made of the looking - glasses of the women that assembled at the door of the tabernacle. It should seem these women were eminent for devotion, attending more constantly at the place of public worship than others, and notice is here taken of it to their honour. These looking - glasses were of the finest brass, burnished for that purpose.In the laver, either they were artfully joined together, or else molten down and cast anew; but it is probable the laver was so brightly burnished that the sides of it still served for looking - glasses, that the priests when they came to wash might there see their faces, and so discover the spots to wash them clean.
38:9 And he made the court - The walls of the court, were like the rest, curtains, or hangings. This represented the state of the Old Testament church, it was a garden enclosed; the worshippers were then confined to a little compass. But the inclosure being of curtains only, intimated that that confinement of the church to one particular nation was not to be perpetual. The dispensation itself was a tabernacle - dispensation, moveable and mutable, and in due time to be taken down and folded up, when the place of the tent should be enlarged, and its cords lengthened, to make room for the Gentile world.
38:21 By the hand of Ithamar - Here we have a breviate of the account which by Moses's appointment the Levites took and kept of the gold, silver, and brass, that was brought in for the tabernacle's use, and how it was employed. Ithamar the son of Aaron was appointed to draw up this account. All the gold amounted to twenty nine talents, and seven hundred and thirty shekels over; Which some compute to be about one hundred and fifty thousand pounds worth of gold, according to the present value of it. The silver amounted to about thirty - four thousand pounds of our money.The raising of the gold by voluntary contribution, and of the silver by way of tribute, shews that either way may be taken for the defraying of public expences, provided that nothing be done with partiality.