Exo 40 | TSK | STEP | The tabernacle is commanded to be reared, anointed, and consecrated. Aaron and his sons to be sanctified. Moses performs all things accordingly. A cloud covers the tabernacle.

the tabernacle.The tabernacle might either be called a house or a tent, because it had wooden walls and partitions like a house, and curtains and hangings like a tent; but as it externally resembled a common oblong tent, and the wooden walls were without a roof, and properly only supports for the many curtains and hangings spread over them, it is more properly called a tent. Even the ordinary tents of the Arabs have at least two main divisions; the innermost for the women, and hence called sacred, i.e., cut off, inaccessible. In the tent of an {emir} the innermost space is accessible to himself only, or those whom he particularly honours; into the outer tent others may come. The furniture is costly, the floor covered with a rich carpet, and has a stand with a censer and coals, on which incense is strewed. Hence we have the simple idea after which this magnificent royal tent of Jehovah, the King and God of the Hebrews, was made.

hanging.

Joh 10:9; 14:6; Eph 2:18; Heb 4:14-16

So Moses.

39:32; 1Ki 6:9; Zec 4:9; Joh 4:34; 17:4; 2Ti 4:7; Heb 3:2-5

a cloud.

13:21,22; 14:19,20,24; 25:8,21,22; 29:43; 33:9; Le 16:2

Nu 9:15-23; 1Ki 8:10,11; 2Ch 5:13; 7:2; Ps 18:10-12; Isa 4:5,6

Isa 6:4; Eze 43:4-7; Hag 2:7,9; Re 15:8; 21:3,23,24

Le 16:2; 1Ki 8:11; 2Ch 5:14; 7:2; Isa 6:4; Re 15:8

when.

13:21,22; Nu 10:11-13,33-36; 19:17-22; Ne 9:19; Ps 78:14; 105:39

1Co 10:1; 2Co 5:19,20

went onward. Heb. journeyed.

Nu 9:19-22; Ps 31:15

the cloud.

13:21; Nu 9:15

fire.

Ps 78:14; 105:39; Isa 4:5,6 CONCLUDING REMARKS. Moses was undoubtedly the author of this Book, which forms a continuation of the preceding, and was evidently written after the promulgation of the law: it embraces the history of about 145 years. Moses, having in the Book of Genesis described the creation of the world, the origin of nations, and the peopling of the earth, details in the Book of Exodus the commencement and nature of the Jewish Church and Polity, which has very properly been termed a Theocracy, (Theokratia, from [Theos ,] God, and [krateó ,] to rule,) in which Jehovah appears not merely as their Creator and God, but as their King. Hence this and the following books of Moses are not purely historical; but contain not only laws for the regulation of their moral conduct and the rites and ceremonies of their religious worship, but judicial and political laws relating to government and civl life. The stupendous facts connected with these events, may be clearly perceived by consulting the marginal references; and many of the circumstances are confirmed by the testimony of heathen writers. Numenius, a Pythagorean philosopher, mentioned by Eusebius, speaks of the opposition of the magicians, whom he calls Jannes and Jambres, to the miracles of Moses. Though the names of these magicians are not preserved in the Sacred Text, yet tradition had preserved them in the Jewish records, from which St. Paul (2 Ti 3:8.) undoubtedly quotes. Add to this that many of the notions of the heathen respecting the appearance of the Deity, and their religious institutions and laws, were borrowed from this book; and many of their fables were nothing more than distorted traditions of those events which are here plainly related by Moses.