JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

dinary preoccupation of the rulings and admonitions with
socio-moral values. Especially noteworthy is the fact that although
the laws have numerous parallels to other Near Eastern
legal collections, the notion of their divine origin appears
unique to Israel.
J. THE COVENANT CEREMONY (EX. 24). Moses relates the
rules and admonitions to the people, who accept them. He
then writes them down, and, after a second reading and acceptance,
performs a sacrifice and blood-sprinkling ceremony
to conclude the pact. Moses and Israel’s notables ascend the
mountain for the sacrificial meal, consecrated by a vision of
God. Afterward, Moses takes leave of the notables and enters
the cloud on the mountaintop to receive the stone tablets and
the laws which God is to give him.
The chronology and interrelation of the elements of this
chapter have long puzzled exegetes. The first two verses of
chapter 24, not picked up until verse 9, are vaguely evocative of
19:24. Some rabbinic opinion places all of the events of 24:1–11
before the pronouncement of the Decalogue (Yoma 4b; Rashi
to 24:1) going so far as to identify the people’s acceptance reported
in 19:8 with that reported in 24:3 (or 7; Saadiah, cited
by Ibn Ezra on 20:21). There is discontinuity between 24:11 and
12: in between, Moses and the elders must have descended the
mountain. The relation of the six and seven days of 24:16 to
prior events is again obscure, rabbinic opinion being divided
as to whether they preceded or followed the Decalogue speech
(see Rashi). The impression is unavoidable that heterogeneous
matter has been combined.
K. ORDERS TO BUILD THE TABERNACLE (TENT OF MEET-
ING, 25:1–27:19). God commands that materials be assembled
for making Him a dwelling place amid the people (see *Tabernacle).
A vision of the tent-sanctuary that God intends in all
its detail is shown to Moses (25:9, 40; 26:30; 27:8; cf. I Chron.
28:12, 19 with reference to Solomon’s Temple, and the dream
of Gudea, the neo-Sumerian ruler of Lagash, summarized in
H. Frankfort, Kingship and the Gods (19552), 255–8; COS II,
417–33). First in importance and first described is the ark – the
receptacle of the “tablets of the pact” that Moses is to receive –
and the cherubim on its cover, where God will “meet with”
Moses and give him his orders concerning Israel (25:22). Next,
the table and lampstand, the furnishings of the outer room of
the sanctuary. All these articles are of gold or wood overlaid
with gold, as befits the holiest part of the sanctuary.
The inner tent is to be of richest cloths: linen of several
plies, and blue, purple, and crimson wool, on which figures of
cherubim are woven; gold clasps connect the cloths. A cover
of goatskin, on which yet another of ram and dolphin skins
lies, protects the inner cloths of the tent.
Planks of acacia wood, set in silver sockets and secured
by horizontal poles, form the walls of the Sanctuary – all the
wood overlaid with gold. A curtain of finest cloth separates
the ark from the outer sanctuary; in the entrance to the latter,
a similar curtain (but with embroidered rather than woven
designs) is hung.
exodus, book of
A square wooden altar overlaid with copper and having
copper service vessels stands in the courtyard. The linen curtains
forming the rectangular court are attached to poles set
in copper sockets. The materials of the sanctuary are clearly
graded in accord with the sanctity of the objects made of
them (M. Haran).
L. ACTIVITIES AND ACTORS IN THE SANCTUARY (27:20–
31:18). Reference to the light which is to be lit nightly in the
Tabernacle and tended by Aaron and his sons leads to a description
of their investiture. The gorgeous sacred vestments
of Aaron, the high priest, are described, then the simpler attire
of his sons. There follows a week-long ritual to be carried
out by Moses to consecrate Aaron and his sons as priests.
Linked to this account of the consecration ritual, through reference
to the altar, is a prescription for the modest daily sacrifices
that are to be made in the Sanctuary (one sheep in the
morning, one in the afternoon). The peroration of this section
(29:42b–46) would be a fitting close to the entire description
of the Tabernacle and its personnel.
However, there is more to come: a gold-plated wooden
incense altar for the outer sanctuary; an injunction to collect a
half-shekel personal ransom from each Israelite to protect him
(“make expiation for him”) against the evil effects of a census
– the money to be assigned to the sanctuary; a description
of the bronze laver and its use by the priests. The references
to the incense altar and the laver include descriptions of the
priestly use of them, which may be the reason for their location
after the section on the priesthood rather than before it,
together with the other furniture. (On the problem see Meyers
in Bibliography. The Samaritan text indeed transposes the
description of the incense altar to follow 26:35.) Recipes for
the anointing oil and the incense conclude the uses for which
the materials listed at the start of the section have been collected.
God then names the craftsmen responsible for executing
all these instructions.
Finally, a Sabbath law, prescribing death for its violation,
is promulgated. The link with the foregoing is the term “labor”
(31:5), the sense of the juxtaposition (as correctly inferred by
the rabbinic exegetes (cf. Rashi, Samuel b. Meir, Ibn Ezra)) being
to establish the priority of the Sabbath rest even over the
building of the Tabernacle.
Sections K. and L. are not a natural sequel to 24:12–13, and
the notice of 31:18 (God gave Moses the stone tablets when
He had finished speaking with him on the mountain) only
underscores the foreignness of the Tabernacle sections to the
narrative framework that surrounds them. To be sure, there
is an associative link between the announcement of a delivery
of stone tablets to Moses and the order to prepare an ark
to receive them (cf. the identical sequence of ideas in Deut.
10:1–3); and since the ark passage was but a part of the detailed
description of the desert sanctuary, its inclusion entailed
the rest of the passage. Rashi (following Tanhuma Ki Tissa 31
(181), cf. Elijah Mizrahi’s comment to Rashi on 31:18) frankly
removes all of 25:1–31:17 from the present order of the narra-
ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 6 617