The Boring Part of Exodus

How many of us have ever read Exodus 25-27, in which plans for the tabernacle and its components are laid out, and thought: "Who cares?" Why does the Bible spend three chapters detailing (and, man, are they detailed!) the blueprints for this tent? And then, why does the Bible essentially repeat itself a little later as it describes how it was constructed (chs. 37-40)? BORING!

To be honest, I thought so too for a long time until a few archaeological details were pointed out to me. Check this out.

Place diagrams or models of some of these pieces alongside ancient Egyptian paintings and relics and the similarities are obvious. For example, the tabernacle on the top looks an awful lot like this typical Egyptian temple just below it, which incidentally is very similar to a tent-like portable palace for Pharaoh. Or the Ark of the Covenant below seems to have been ripped right from what we know of ancient Egyptian arks, like the one underneath it.

What gives? A lot of secular Bible scholars would have us believe that Exodus is misleading. They would suggest that these plans for the tabernacle and the ark were not actually given to the people direct from God via Moses. These scholars would tell us that the Hebrews, having spent the previous 400 years in Egypt, were simply replicating Egyptian religion under a different name. I would suggest a different option.

When trying to explain to a new Christian or a nonbeliever the incarnation (you know, God become man in Jesus), it's helpful to think of it as God coming to meet us where we were. We wouldn't have been able to find Him on our own, so He made Himself human, something we could relate to.

The same applies to the tabernacle. The Hebrews had absorbed a lot of Egyptian culture during their 400 years of captivity there. By the time the Lord rescued them and brought them to Sinai this is what they knew: Pharaoh was Lord. To break this understanding, God used Egyptians models to speak through symbols the Hebrews would have understood. If Pharaoh had a traveling tent-like palace and he sat in the "holy place," then God's tabernacle would look the same and God would dwell in place of Pharaoh. The message: Yahweh is Lord.

So as the Hebrews received instructions for the tabernacle from Moses, imagine it slowly dawning on many of them: "Hey, this thing looks an awful lot like Pharaoh's mobile palace, but who's going to sit on the throne?" Then it gets filled by the glory of the Lord (Exodus 40) and it hits the people all at once and their framework for understanding the world has to turn around all at once.

This naturally raises quite a few questions for us today. What secular (or even religious) symbols are around today that point to other gods and how might they be reassigned to our Lord (Jesus, our Commander-in-Chief; Yahweh the CEO; etc.)? How can these sorts of bridges be used to help lead our congregation in worship? Are there symbols we often use in the church these days that seem outdated or incomprehensible today? Are there ways we can update them?