1And he made the altar of burnt offering of acacia wood, its length five cubits and its width five cubits, square, and its height three cubits.
2And he made its horns on its four corners. Its horns were part of it. And he plated it with bronze.
3And he made all the altar’s equipment: the pots, the shovels and the basins, the forks and the fire-holders. He made all of its equipment bronze.
4And he made a grate for the altar, a network of bronze, under its ledge up to the middle of it.
5And he cast four rings in the bronze grate’s four ends: housings for the poles.
6And he made the poles of acacia wood and plated them with bronze
7and brought the poles through the rings on the altar’s sides in order to carry it with them. He made it hollow of boards.
8And he made the basin of bronze and its stand of bronze with the mirrors of the women who served at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting.
38:8. women who served at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting. This is the first mention of the female workers at the Tabernacle. They are mentioned one time outside the Torah: a few generations after Moses, the priest Eli’s sons have illicit sex with them at Shiloh. The temptation of males in power to take advantage of their high position in the eyes of women who work under them has persisted for centuries. It is criticized in the Tanak. In the case of the Shiloh priests, it is one of the acts that leads to the downfall of that priestly house and its replacement by Samuel (1 Sam 2:22–26).
9And he made the courtyard: for the south side—to the south, the courtyard’s hangings of woven linen, a hundred in cubits,
10their columns twenty, and their bases twenty of bronze, and the columns’ hooks and their rods of silver.
11And for the north side: a hundred in cubits, their columns twenty, and their bases twenty of bronze, and the columns’ hooks and their bands of silver.
12And for the west side: hangings of fifty in cubits, their columns ten, and their bases ten, the columns’ hooks and their bands of silver.
13And the courtyard’s width for the east side—to the east—fifty cubits.
14Fifteen cubits of hangings to the panel, their columns three and their bases three;
15and the second panel—on this side and that side of the courtyard’s gate—hangings of fifteen cubits, their columns three and their bases three.
16All of the courtyard’s hangings, all around, were woven linen.
17And the column’s bases were bronze, the columns’ hooks and their bands were silver, and the plating of their tops was silver, and they were banded with silver: all of the courtyard’s columns.
18And the cover of the courtyard’s gate was embroiderer’s work, blue and purple and scarlet and woven linen, and twenty cubits in length, and five cubits in height in the width, in juxtaposition to the courtyard’s hangings.
38:18. five cubits in height in the width. I understand the cover to be a canopy above the entrance (as opposed to a screen or curtain hanging). The Hebrew (m
sk) denotes a thing that covers over something else (Exod 40:3; 2 Sam 17:19; Ps 105:39). So the phrase in this verse means that the entire width of the courtyard’s cover, from front to back, is suspended five cubits above the ground, or that both its width and its height above the ground are five cubits.
19And their columns were four and their bases four of bronze, their hooks silver, and the plating of their tops and their bands silver.
20And all of the pegs of the Tabernacle and the courtyard all around were bronze.
21These are the accounts of the Tabernacle, the Tabernacle of the Testimony, that were made by Moses’ word, the work of the Levites by the hand of Ithamar, son of Aaron, the priest.
38:21. by the hand of Ithamar. Meaning: under the direction of Ithamar.
22And Bezalel, son of Uri, son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah, made everything that YHWH had commanded Moses.
23And with him was Oholiab, son of Ahisamach, of the tribe of Dan, an engraver and designer and embroiderer in blue and in purple and in scarlet and in linen.
24All the gold that was used for the work, in all the work of the Holy: and the gold of the elevation offering was twenty-nine talents and seven hundred thirty shekels by the shekel of the Holy.
25And the silver of the congregation’s accounts was a hundred talents and a thousand seven hundred seventy-five shekels by the shekel of the Holy:
26a beqa per head, half of a shekel by the shekel of the Holy, for everyone who passed through the counts, from twenty years old and up, for six hundred thousand and three thousand five hundred fifty.
27And the hundred talents of silver were for casting the bases of the Holy and the bases of the pavilion, a hundred bases to the hundred talents, a talent per base.
28And he made the thousand seven hundred seventy-five into hooks for the columns, and he plated their tops and banded them.
29And the bronze of the elevation offering was seventy talents and two thousand four hundred shekels.
30And with it he made the bases of the entrance of the Tent of Meeting and the bronze altar and the bronze network that it had and all of the altar’s equipment
31and the bases of the courtyard all around and the bases of the courtyard’s gate and all of the Tabernacle’s pegs and all of the courtyard’s pegs all around.
