As it turns out, this wasn't a half-bad section to fall a bit behind on, post-wise. I'm glad that I managed to keep up with the readings every day, though, because slogging through these eight chapters in one go could bog a fella down.
Taken all together, and viewed from a bit of a more distanced perspective, this is a cool chunk of text.
Essentially, for those who like the Cole's Notes version, chapters 25-31 outline, in exquisite (to choose only one of many potential adjectives here) detail, pretty much everything about the physical trappings of early Hebrew worship, from the materials and exact dimensions of the Ark of the Covenant (although it's actually never called that here; it's refered to as the "ark of the testimony"...) to the same specifications regarding the tabernacle, the other altar areas, the Mercy Seat (the lid of the Ark, for lack of a more proper summary), right down to every little element of Aaron's priestly robes and clothes, those of the other priests, recipes for incense and precise compositions of the various sacrifices for various things.
It also includes the instructions regarding the Sabbath and even references for which of Israel's craftsmen were best suited for the job.
To get a bird's-eye notion of the contents, a listing of the (admittedly arbitrary, but in this case fairly succinct) headings used in the biblestudytools.com NASB version will do nicely:
- Offerings for the Sanctuary
- Ark of the Covenant
- The Table of Showbread
- The Golden Lampstand
- Curtains of Linen
- Curtains of Goats' Hair
- Boards and Sockets
- The Veil and Screen
- The Bronze Altar
- Court of the Tabernacle
- Garments of the Priests
- Consecration of the Priests
- The Sacrifices
- Food of the Priests
- The Altar of Incense
- The Anointing Oil
- The Incense
- The Skilled Craftsmen
- The Sign of the Sabbath
Whew. An exhaustive, not to mention occasionally exhausting, laundry list of every possible element of worship, and while it does tend to drag on a bit at times, one thing comes across as perfectly clear: the worship for which all of this stuff is to be prepared is something distinctly special, to put it mildly.
As it moves along, the word "holy" is used more and more to define the space and the activities it's being designed for, and no wonder: nothing about these specifications indicates anything other than holiness.
There's also a definite beauty to the elaborate details of just about every part of this. Aside from the expense of it all (and what makes something expensive other than how 'set apart' it is from the everyday?), the description of this stuff is one of unbelievable, breathtaking, shocking beauty and artistic virtuosity, and every single thing is planned, down to the last, most easily overlooked detail. Nothing is haphazard, nothing is accidental, and nothing is left to circumstance or "oh, just use whatever's lying around."
That's when we finally get back to some narrative, and it's also when we get a possible answer to the question (that I can't be the only person who asked) of why exactly all of this was necessary to read...
While Moses was up on the mountain talking to God and getting all of these details, the Israelites (remember them?) are still down below, and - not uncharacteristically - they're getting impatient. For what, it's not totally clear, it just says that they've already waited for Moses, they don't know what happened and they want Aaron to make them a new god...
There are, sometimes, no words...
Anyway, even more baffling than the initial request (although to be fair, we've already seen how entire years are passed by without so much as a heads-up or a "time passes" card being paraded across the stage) is the fact that Aaron doesn't so much as protest a little before agreeing. He just says "alright, grab some gold you've got lying around and I'll see what I can do."
He collects all their earrings and jewelry, chucks it into a fire, melts it down and makes it roughly cow-shaped and then everyone says "THERE! YOUR NEW GOD!"
C.S. Lewis once wrote (through the middle-management demon Screwtape) that the truly remarkable pleasures of the world were not only morally acceptable, but actually to be avoided in the grand scheme of trying to damn souls, since they all come from God, and that the ideal situation for a tempter was to have a man's life end with him having done neither what he ought to have done, nor what he actually wanted to do.
It's a fairly common (or at least, recurring) theme in Lewis's theology - that what God's got in store for us is always tremendous and amazing and glorious and what we choose instead is just a cheap, shoddy imitation of what could be.
Aquinas says somewhere in the Summa Theologicae that sin is, basically, choosing a lesser good over a greater one. He says that our basic desires are generally good, but that we choose perverted or compromised fulfilments of them, and that's where we go terribly wrong.
This is pretty much what they're talking about, I think. As bone-headed as the Israelites are, and they are - and will continue to be - in many ways, I'm not sure that they're actually malicious or evil in their desire for this. Throughout Genesis, and definitely in their time in Egypt, the worship of a physical representation of a deity (an idol) has been commonplace. Rachel, Joseph's mother, smuggles out her father's household gods, and that's a normal thing for him to have had around.
So their little golden calf thing is not quite so outlandish and ridiculous as it may at first seem, and I think it does stem from a genuine desire to worship the God that brought the out of Egypt, but it is tragically, poignantly crappy compared to what God actually had in store for their worship of Him.
Taken in context of what God had in mind, the story's really quite sad...
...it also contains what might be the single lamest excuse of something anyone has ever uttered, and it comes from none other than God's own chosen mouthpiece, and co-liberator of the Israelites from Egypt: Moses's brother Aaron.
I'll just let him tell you what he's got to say, in his own defense for creating for Israel their shoddy, crappy, cheap knock-off imitation of the glorious worship experience that God wanted for them, and then you can bask in it:
"I said to them, 'Whoever has any gold, let them tear it off.' So they gave it to me, and I threw it into the fire, and out came this calf." (32:24)
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