Today, I am reading and commenting on Exodus 39-40.

When I read through this the first time my thought was that the cloud of the glory of Lord covering the tabernacle would be my focus.  As I reread the passage to get my thoughts in order, I read the description of what the skilled craftsmen had created and thought it was mostly a repeat of the description God had given Moses of what they were to do.  And that is definitely true.  I also thought about the description of Moses putting the tabernacle up for the first time.  Once again, I thought about the fact that he would have needed a lot of help to do so.  I have written about that before, but in light of how much the gold, silver, and bronze weighed this year I realized just how big that task was.  Then, once Moses was satisfied that the tabernacle and its furnishings had been set up correctly, the passage tells us that “the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle.”  Until today I always thought the “tent of meeting” in that sentence was the tabernacle.  It occurred to me today that, while in the passages following this “tent of meeting” referred to the tabernacle, in this sentence tent of meeting may refer to the tent of meeting which Moses used before the tabernacle was built.  Moses could no longer enter the old tent of meeting because the cloud settled over it, but the glory of the Lord was no longer there.  Moses no loner met with God at the temporary, cobbled-together, tent of meeting which he had designed and put up outside of camp for that purpose.  He now met with God in the tabernacle, which had been designed by God and was put up in the middle of the camp.  This foreshadows the change which happens when Christ died and rose from the dead.  Under the Old Covenant, we met God in a structure outside of ourselves.  In the New Covenant, we meet God inside our hearts.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.