Terumah 5786
“An” Ark
This week we are reading Parashat Terumah (Exod 25:1–27:19), the beginning of the long second half of the book of Exodus — the last 16 chapters — of which most, 13 chapters’ worth, is dedicated to the building of the Tabernacle. In the last chapter, Exodus 40, in the very last paragraph of the book of Exodus, the Tabernacle comes online and God is present amongst the Israelites. Parashat Terumah is where it all begins.
As I noted a couple of years ago, this is the very first commandment that YHWH spoke to Moses after he went up the mountain to spend 40 days there. It’s not the beginning of the Torah, at Genesis 1, nor at Exodus 12, where Jewish tradition seems to think the commandments in the Torah begin (that’s why the Tannaitic midrashim skip all of Genesis and Exodus 1–11).
Repeat: the very first thing God says after Moses goes up to spend 40 days and 40 nights with him is this commandment to build the Tabernacle:
Exod 25:1 The LORD spoke to Moses, saying: 2 Tell the Israelite people to bring Me gifts; you shall accept gifts for Me from every person whose heart so moves him. 3 And these are the gifts that you shall accept from them: gold, silver, and copper; 4 blue, purple, and crimson yarns, fine linen, goats’ hair; 5 tanned ram skins, dolphin skins, and acacia wood; 6 [the] oil for lighting [שֶׁ֖מֶן לַמָּאֹ֑ר], spices for the anointing oil and for the aromatic incense; 7 lapis lazuli and other stones for setting, for the ephod and for the breastpiece. 8And let them make Me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them. 9 Exactly as I show you—the pattern of the Tabernacle and the pattern of all its furnishings—so shall you make it. [NJPS]
Now contrast what follows:
Exod 25:10 They shall make an ark of acacia wood, two and a half cubits long, a cubit and a half wide, and a cubit and a half high. 11 Overlay it with pure gold—overlay it inside and out—and make upon it a gold molding round about. 12 Cast four gold rings for it, to be attached to its four feet, two rings on one of its side walls and two on the other. 13 Make poles of acacia wood and overlay them with gold; 14 then insert the poles into the rings on the side walls of the ark, for carrying the ark. 15 The poles shall remain in the rings of the ark: they shall not be removed from it. 16 And deposit in the Ark [the tablets of] the Pact which I will give you.
That is, the first paragraph of this chapter presumes that the Israelites already know, or at least Moses already knows, what this Tabernacle is all about. There are all kinds of fine high-end commodities (gold, silver, and copper; blue, purple, and crimson yarns; and so forth) that Moses must get from the Israelites for use in constructing this Tabernacle, but when the instructions for using them begin we see YHWH speaking about “the” oil for lighting, “the” anointing oil, “the” aromatic incense, “the” ephod, and “the” breast piece. Only then do we hear the instruction to “let them make Me a sanctuary.”
You would think that “let them make Me a sanctuary” ought to have been the first commandment in this chapter, not v. 8. Let them make me a sanctuary, and tell them to bring gifts for that purpose. Yet even before were told that this is about building a sanctuary we’re supposed to know that whatever these things are for is going to involve …
lighting lamps, because you must bring oil for “the” lighting;
anointing, because you have to bring spices for “the” anointing oil;
incense, because you have to bring spices for “the” incense; and
“the” ephod and “the” breast piece, whatever they are.
All these are specified in a way that suggests we already know about them.1
The logical conclusion is that when the Israelites are told to bring these gifts — gold and silver, ram skins, and all the rest — the Israelites got it. The Israelites understood: Oh, this is for ritual worship. We are going to have people serving as priests and doing various rituals, which (we know) automatically involves lighting lamps, anointing people, and burning incense. Of course the priest will have to wear an ephod (everybody knows what that is) and a breast piece. The Israelites are supposed to have already known this.
Contrast what happens when we get to v. 10: “They shall make an ark of acacia wood.” This was evidently not something that was to be expected. There was obviously going to be some sort of a tent made with these skins, there was going to be a priest serving in the tent, he had to be anointed and burn incense and light lamps; fine. Now there’s going to be an “ark”?
Then comes v. 16: “Deposit in the Ark [the tablets of] the Pact which I will give you.” If you have the right prayer book or the right Torah commentary, you can find little pictures of the ark — drawings or painting, not photographs. These should all be marked “artists’ conception.” We don’t really know precisely what it looked like. We know there are cherubim (“griffins”) on top of the ark, holding their wings in such a way that if you wanted to — if you were YHWH — you could sit down on their wings as if they were a throne. This was not what the Israelites might have expected — that there would be a throne at the center of this worship place that they were being asked to contribute to, a throne was going to be on top of a box (that’s what an “ark” is) whose purpose was to preserve the text of the deal made between the Israelites and God. The covenant, if you prefer that archaic religious language.
The lighting, the incense, the anointing oil, even an ephod and a breast piece were obvious components of the religion the Israelites are depicted as anticipating, all of them things that you obviously had to have if you were going to have priests. But an ark with written tablets? That must have been new.
More about the tabernacle next week.
I can’t resist adding the following paragraph, which appeared in my email shortly after I prepared this column:
Another thing that is going on here is that no lawyer can resist the opportunity to say “aha, if this document said ‘a’ you’d get $650,000, but it says ‘the’ so you don’t.” That is the sort of thing that lawyers live for.
So you are saying that the author (or whoever is penning these instructions) is retrofitting the instructions based upon a known mishkan?