The Altar
You shall make the altar of acacia wood, five cubits long, and five cubits broad; the altar shall be foursquare: and its height shall be three cubits. 2You shall make its horns on its four corners; its horns shall be of one piece with it; and you shall overlay it with brass. 3You shall make its pots to take away its ashes, its shovels, its basins, its flesh hooks, and its fire pans: all its vessels you shall make of brass. 4You shall make a grating for it of network of brass: and on the net you shall make four bronze rings in its four corners. 5You shall put it under the ledge around the altar beneath, that the net may reach halfway up the altar. 6You shall make poles for the altar, poles of acacia wood, and overlay them with brass. 7Its poles shall be put into the rings, and the poles shall be on the two sides of the altar, when carrying it. 8You shall make it with hollow planks. They shall make it as it has been shown you on the mountain.
The Court
9You shall make the court of the tabernacle: for the south side southward there shall be hangings for the court of fine twined linen one hundred cubits long for one side; 10and its pillars shall be twenty, and their sockets twenty, of brass; the hooks of the pillars and their fillets shall be of silver. 11Likewise for the north side in length there shall be hangings one hundred cubits long, and its pillars twenty, and their sockets twenty, of brass; the hooks of the pillars, and their fillets, of silver. 12For the breadth of the court on the west side shall be hangings of fifty cubits; their pillars ten, and their sockets ten. 13The breadth of the court on the east side eastward shall be fifty cubits. 14The hangings for the one side of the gate shall be fifteen cubits; their pillars three, and their sockets three. 15For the other side shall be hangings of fifteen cubits; their pillars three, and their sockets three. 16For the gate of the court shall be a screen of twenty cubits, of blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine twined linen, the work of the embroiderer; their pillars four, and their sockets four. 17All the pillars of the court around shall be filleted with silver; their hooks of silver, and their sockets of brass. 18The length of the court shall be one hundred cubits, and the breadth fifty everywhere, and the height five cubits, of fine twined linen, and their sockets of brass. 19All the instruments of the tabernacle in all its service, and all its pins, and all the pins of the court, shall be of brass. 20You shall command the children of Israel, that they bring to you pure olive oil beaten for the light, to cause a lamp to burn continually. 21In the Tent of Meeting, outside the veil which is before the testimony, Aaron and his sons shall keep it in order from evening to morning before Yahweh: it shall be a statute forever throughout their generations on the behalf of the children of Israel.
Commentary
27:1 Acacia wood- This was plentiful in the wilderness, but it is little more than brushwood; a surprising choice of material to be used in God’s dwelling place. But His choice of us with all our weakness and dysfunction, the common, weak stuff of the wilderness, is no less surprising. The choice of acacia wood for constructing the tabernacle is one of several points in the whole enterprise where it seems a less than ideal material was chosen, from a construction point of view. This aspect emphasizes that God prefers to work with the soft, weak and broken in order to do His work (as also in Ez. 15:2-5).
27:20 The lampstand is used as a symbol of the ecclesia in the visions of Revelation 2 and 3. The purpose of the ecclesia is to enable the oil of the Spirit to be burnt, to turn it into light. We are to keep our own personal light burning continually, day and night. Jesus had this in mind when He likened us to women waiting for the bridegroom to come at night, whose oil lamps should not be allowed to go out (Mt. 25).
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