Bible Commentaries

CHAP. XXXVI.

The offerings are delivered to the workmen: the liberality of the people is restrained.

Before Christ 1490.

Exodus 36:1. Then wrought Bezaleel, &c.— As this verse stands, it seems to make the sense incoherent, as if Bezaleel, &c. had set about the work before Moses delivered it to them: see Exodus 36:2. Junius, therefore, judiciously connects it with the last chapter; and renders it, therefore Bezaleel and Aholiah shall do the work, and every wise-hearted man, &c. Nothing, says Junius, can be more grammatical than this connexion; and, in consequence of it, this 36th chapter will begin with great propriety at the second verse, Then Moses called Bezaleel, &c.

Exodus 36:3. And they brought yet unto him free-offerings every morning— Nothing can be more pleasing to observe, than this liberality of the people: conscious how much they had offended by their offerings to form the idolatrous calf, they now seem desirous to prove their repentance by the cheerful zeal wherewith they present these free-gifts to him. The integrity and disinterestedness of Moses, as well as of the workmen, are conspicuous in the prohibition given to the people in the next chapter. Had they been desirous to have served themselves, they would have gladly received all the gifts which were offered, and never have enjoined, let neither man nor woman make any more stuff for the offering of the sanctuary.

REFLECTIONS.—The appointment is no sooner made than the workmen begin. They are pleased with the employment, and that makes the toil a pleasure. Note; To spend and be spent in the service of God and immortal souls is the happiness of the faithful labourer; while to be forced to minister in holy things without any relish for, or rather with a loathing of the work, is surely the most wretched drudgery that can be conceived.

Exodus 36:8.— It may be proper to observe here, for the sake of the learned reader, that the Vatican edition of the LXX varies much from all other copies of the Bible; giving us here that description of the priests' vestments, which we have in the 39th chapter, instead of the description of the tabernacle. There are also many other variations and transpositions throughout these five last chapters in that version, but none of them of any considerable importance.

With cherubims of cunning work— Houbigant renders this, figuris opere textile intertextis: for כרוב kerub, says he, in the Hebrew, is a genus, as Castel, after Aben-Ezra, shews us; and, before them, St. Jerome: and here it means figure in general.

Exodus 36:9-38.— We have here,

1. The tabernacle completed. The inside is finished first. Note; Our first care must be about the hidden man of the heart.

2. The coverings are prepared to guard it from the injuries of the weather. They who dwell under the shadow of Jesus, the true Tabernacle, have such a covert, that no storms of wrath, or blasts of temptation, can ever hurt them.

3. The two vails are hung on their pillars to separate the holiest of all from the holy place, and the first tabernacle from the court of the congregation. The people then might not draw near; but now, by the body of Jesus, the vail is rent from the top to the bottom, and every true worshipper may approach the mercy-seat with boldness.