The glory fills the tent: God comes to dwell with Israel

Exodus 40 is the last chapter of the book. Its subject is the setting up of the tabernacle, the portable tent-shrine that the LORD commanded Moses to have built at Sinai. The instructions are in chapters 25-31, and the craftsmen Bezalel and Oholiab, filled with God's Spirit, make it in chapters 35-39. Chapter 40 gives the final command and the final obedience. Jewish and Christian tradition ascribes the book to Moses. Critical scholars assign most of the tabernacle material to the Priestly source and some have argued that it reflects the later temple more than a wilderness tent. Others note that portable tent shrines are known from ancient Egypt and that nothing in the description is out of place in a nomadic setting. The class reads the chapter as it stands.

The date of the setting up is given in verse 17 as the first day of the first month of the second year, about a year after the Passover (Exodus 12:2). The absolute date depends on the date of the exodus, which is debated between an early date near 1446 BC and a late date in the thirteenth century BC.

The first readers were Israelites who remembered the tabernacle as the place where God first came to live among them, and who later worshiped at the temple that took its place. The chapter closes Exodus by answering the question of chapter 33: will the LORD go with this stiff-necked people? Here the answer is yes.

Exodus 40 is narrative with an instruction speech at its front. The sequence has three parts: a command (verses 1-15), an obedience report (16-33) and God's response (34-38). The obedience report is a list that repeats like a liturgy. The statement that Moses did what the LORD commanded appears in verses 16, 19, 21, 23, 25, 27, 29 and 32. Hebrew narrative uses repetition to mark what matters, and the repetition here makes the point that the tabernacle was built exactly as God directed and so can be the place where he comes.

The chapter should be read with the whole tabernacle section in view. Scholars have long noticed echoes of the creation account in the language. Exodus 39:43 says that Moses inspected all the work and blessed the workers, like God seeing all that he had made and calling it good (Genesis 1:31). In 40:33, 'So Moses finished the work' uses the same verb as 'God finished his work' (Genesis 2:2). Many think the tabernacle is designed as a small copy of the ordered world with God at its center. That is a reading of patterns in the text, and the text does not say so directly.

Two cautions apply.

• First, a list of curtains and furniture is easy to turn into allegory, in which every detail is given a hidden meaning. Hebrews 8-10 shows what the New Testament actually says about the tabernacle, and it reads it as a whole, as a shadow and copy, not detail by detail.
• Second, the chapter is not an abstract diagram but the end of a story. The tabernacle is the answer to the golden calf: it is God's way of living with a people who cannot see him.

Verses 1–8

The LORD tells Moses to set up the tabernacle, the Tent of Meeting, on the first day of the first month, which begins the new year. The order of the instructions moves from the center outward. First the ark of the Testimony, screened off with the veil. Then the table and its bread, the lampstand and its lamps, the gold altar of incense in front of the ark, and the curtain at the entrance to the tabernacle. Then the altar of burnt offering in front of the entrance, the basin between the tent and the altar, and the courtyard with its entrance curtain. The ark, with the stone tablets and the mercy seat above it, is the heart; each stage outward is less holy than the one before.

Verses 9–15

Moses is to anoint the tabernacle and everything in it with the anointing oil, to consecrate the altar so that it is most holy, and the basin and its stand. Then Aaron and his sons are to be brought to the entrance, washed, clothed in the holy garments and anointed, so that they may serve as priests. The anointing makes the priesthood permanent throughout their generations. The execution of these verses is not narrated in this chapter; Leviticus 8 describes the consecration. The word for anoint (mashach) is the root of 'Messiah', 'the anointed one'.

Verses 16–33

Moses did everything just as the LORD had commanded him. He sets up the tabernacle on the first day of the first month of the second year, laying its bases, setting the frames, the crossbars and posts, and spreading the tent and its covering. He puts the Testimony in the ark, attaches the poles, sets the mercy seat on top and brings the ark in, hanging the veil in front of it. The table goes on the north side outside the veil, with the bread arranged before the LORD, and the lampstand on the south side. The gold altar goes in front of the veil, and Moses burns fragrant incense on it. At the entrance he places the altar of burnt offering and offers a burnt offering and a grain offering. The basin is between the tent and the altar, and Moses, Aaron and his sons wash their hands and feet whenever they enter the tent or approach the altar. Finally Moses sets up the courtyard. 'So Moses finished the work.'

Verses 34–35

Then the cloud covered the Tent of Meeting, and the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle. The word for glory (kavod) means weight, the visible splendor of God's presence. Moses was unable to enter. The man who spoke with the LORD face to face (33:11) and who asked to see his glory (33:18) cannot go in. The text does not say that the glory is dangerous to him, only that the cloud settled on the tent and the glory filled it. The scene is deliberate: God takes possession of the house made for him. The same thing happens at the dedication of Solomon's temple, where a cloud fills the house and the priests cannot stand to minister (1 Kings 8:10-11).

Verses 36–38

For all the Israelites' journeys the cloud governs their movement. When it lifted from the tabernacle they set out, and when it did not they stayed. By day the cloud of the LORD was over the tabernacle, and fire was in the cloud by night, in the sight of all the house of Israel through all their journeys. This is the pillar that went before them at the exodus (13:21-22), now settled in the middle of the camp. The details are expanded in Numbers 9:15-23.

Exodus 40 completes the movement of the book from slavery to dwelling. At the start, Israel serves Pharaoh; at the end, they serve the LORD in a house where he lives. In Exodus 25:8 the LORD said that he wished them to make a sanctuary so that he might dwell among them, and 29:45-46 gives the purpose of the exodus itself: he brought them out of Egypt so that he might dwell among them. The chapter is the arrival of that purpose.

• The first doctrine is the presence of God. The same God who is holy and cannot be approached carelessly now lives in the middle of a camp of sinners. The structure of the tabernacle, with its veil, altar, basin and priests, shows the terms. The people can have God near only through sacrifice, washing and a mediator.
• The second is obedience as the setting for presence. Moses does everything as commanded, and God fills the house.
• The third is God's guidance. The cloud moves when the LORD moves.
• The fourth is the link with creation. Many scholars see the tabernacle as a sign that God's ordered world and his rest are being restored among his people.

In the canon the pattern of glory-filled house continues through Solomon's temple (1 Kings 8:10-11), the departure of the glory in Ezekiel's vision (Ezekiel 10-11), and the promised return (Ezekiel 43:1-5). Leviticus 26:11-12 promises that God will set his dwelling among them and walk among them. The Bible's end returns to the same words: the dwelling of God is with man (Revelation 21:3).

The clearest connection is fulfillment, in John 1:14. The Word became flesh and 'dwelt' among us, and the Greek verb is related to the word for tent. The next words, 'and we have seen His glory', place the incarnation in the line of Exodus 40:34-35. The glory that once filled a tent of curtains now lives in a human body. Jesus himself says that his body is the temple (John 2:19-21), and Colossians 2:9 says that in him all the fullness of deity dwells bodily.

The second connection is type and shadow. Hebrews 8:5 says that the priests serve a copy and shadow of the heavenly things, quoting the command to Moses to make everything according to the pattern shown on the mountain (Exodus 25:40). Hebrews 9:11 says that Christ entered through the greater and more perfect tent, and 9:24 that he entered heaven itself. The anointing in Exodus 40:9-15 is also taken up: the priests are anointed, and Jesus is 'the Anointed One', the Messiah and Christ, who was anointed with the Holy Spirit and power (Acts 10:38). The veil that screened off the ark is read in Hebrews 10:19-20 as the flesh of Jesus, through which a new and living way into the Holy Place is opened. The Gospels record that the temple veil was torn at his death (Matthew 27:51).

• Third, there are echoes. At the annunciation, Gabriel tells Mary that the power of the Most High will overshadow her (Luke 1:35), and the verb is the same one the Greek translation of Exodus uses for the cloud settling on the tent. At the transfiguration, a cloud overshadows the disciples (Matthew 17:5). These are echoes and not explicit citations.
• Finally, the church is called God's temple, in which the Spirit dwells (1 Corinthians 3:16; Ephesians 2:21-22), and the end is a city in which there is no temple because the Lord God and the Lamb are its temple (Revelation 21:22).