Exodus 26 — A Tent for the God Who Travels

Today’s Passage: Exodus 26

Here is a chapter that at first glance looks like nothing but a builder’s order sheet, page after page of curtains and cubits and clasps and loops, and I can well imagine a reader’s eye beginning to slide down it looking for the story. Yet I would ask you to stay, and to read it the way you would watch a great house being raised by a master craftsman, because what God is describing here is His own dwelling place on earth. This is the tabernacle itself, the tent that would stand at the very center of the camp, and everything in it is meant to teach. Do not try to hold every measurement in your head; that was for the workmen, not for us. Hold instead the wonder of the thing, that the God who filled Sinai with fire would fold Himself, so to speak, into a tent of linen and goat hair and gold-covered boards, and travel with a wandering people through the wilderness. And hold above all the veil, the beautiful embroidered curtain hung across the innermost room, guarding the place where God would meet with them, for that veil is the heart of the chapter, and it points down all the centuries to a Friday afternoon when it would be torn from top to bottom.

As you read, hold this: God gave the plan for a tent so that the Holy One could dwell among His pilgrim people, hidden behind a veil that would one day be torn open in Christ.

Exodus 26:1-6 (BSB)

¹ “You are to construct the tabernacle itself with ten curtains of finely spun linen, each with blue, purple, and scarlet yarn, and cherubim skillfully worked into them. ² Each curtain shall be twenty-eight cubits long and four cubits wide—all curtains the same size. ³ Five of the curtains are to be joined together, and the other five joined as well. ⁴ Make loops of blue material on the edge of the end curtain in the first set, and do the same for the end curtain in the second set. ⁵ Make fifty loops on one curtain and fifty loops on the end curtain of the second set, so that the loops line up opposite one another. ⁶ Make fifty gold clasps as well, and join the curtains together with the clasps, so that the tabernacle will be a unit.

The instructions begin at the innermost and most beautiful layer, the ten linen curtains that would form the very ceiling and inner walls of God’s house. Do not lose yourself in the loops and the clasps; look instead at what the cloth was made of. This was finely spun linen, the costliest weaving Israel knew, colored with the royal dyes of blue and purple and scarlet, and into it were worked cherubim, the guardian angels of God’s throne. It was, in a sense, a woven heaven, a picture of the courts above brought down and stretched across a tent in the desert. And notice that all this splendor faced inward, toward the room where God would dwell. The people camped outside would never see it. It was beauty prepared for the eyes of God.

And see how carefully the many curtains were to be joined, fifty loops matched to fifty loops, fifty gold clasps drawing the two great sets together so that, as the text says twice over, the tabernacle would be a unit, a single whole. Many pieces, one dwelling. There is a quiet fitness in that for the people of God, who are many and scattered and yet are being joined, clasp by clasp, into one house where He is pleased to live.

Exodus 26:7-14 (BSB)

⁷ You are to make curtains of goat hair for the tent over the tabernacle—eleven curtains in all. ⁸ Each of the eleven curtains is to be the same size—thirty cubits long and four cubits wide. ⁹ Join five of the curtains into one set and the other six into another. Then fold the sixth curtain over double at the front of the tent. ¹⁰ Make fifty loops along the edge of the end curtain in the first set, and fifty loops along the edge of the corresponding curtain in the second set. ¹¹ Make fifty bronze clasps and put them through the loops to join the tent together as a unit. ¹² As for the overlap that remains of the tent curtains, the half curtain that is left over shall hang down over the back of the tabernacle. ¹³ And the tent curtains will be a cubit longer on either side, and the excess will hang over the sides of the tabernacle to cover it. ¹⁴ Also make a covering for the tent out of ram skins dyed red, and over that a covering of fine leather.

Now come the outer coverings, and the contrast with what we have just seen is the whole point. Over the woven heaven of linen went a tent of plain goat hair, the common cloth of the ordinary shepherd’s tent, and over that a covering of ram skins dyed red, and over all a tough outer layer of fine leather to turn the wind and the rain. Layer by layer the beauty grew simpler and rougher, until the outside of God’s dwelling looked like any weathered tent a traveler might pass in the wilderness and never look at twice.

Sit with that a moment, for it preaches. The glory of this house was hidden under humble coverings, its splendor reserved for the inside where God met His people, while the world outside saw only plain skins. It is the way God so often works, wrapping what is holiest in what looks lowly, so that only those who are brought inside ever see the beauty of it. Ages later a greater dwelling of God would come among us, of whom it was written that He had no stately form to make us look at Him, and yet within that plain human tent was all the fullness of God. The rough outer covering of Exodus 26 was teaching Israel not to judge the presence of God by the plainness of its wrapping.

Exodus 26:15-30 (BSB)

¹⁵ You are to construct upright frames of acacia wood for the tabernacle. ¹⁶ Each frame is to be ten cubits long and a cubit and a half wide. ¹⁷ Two tenons must be connected to each other for each frame. Make all the frames of the tabernacle in this way. ¹⁸ Construct twenty frames for the south side of the tabernacle, ¹⁹ with forty silver bases under the twenty frames—two bases for each frame, one under each tenon. ²⁰ For the second side of the tabernacle, the north side, make twenty frames ²¹ and forty silver bases—two bases under each frame. ²² Make six frames for the rear of the tabernacle, the west side, ²³ and two frames for the two back corners of the tabernacle, ²⁴ coupled together from bottom to top and fitted into a single ring. These will serve as the two corners. ²⁵ So there are to be eight frames and sixteen silver bases—two under each frame. ²⁶ You are also to make five crossbars of acacia wood for the frames on one side of the tabernacle, ²⁷ five for those on the other side, and five for those on the rear side of the tabernacle, to the west. ²⁸ The central crossbar in the middle of the frames shall extend from one end to the other. ²⁹ Overlay the frames with gold and make gold rings to hold the crossbars. Also overlay the crossbars with gold. ³⁰ So you are to set up the tabernacle according to the pattern shown you on the mountain.

Here God turns from the coverings to the framework that would hold them up, the tall upright boards of acacia wood that formed the standing walls of the tent. Again, let the measurements pass; hold instead the picture of them. Each frame stood upright in the desert, set into heavy bases of silver so that the whole wall was anchored and would not shift, and every board was overlaid with gold, joined and braced by golden crossbars running through golden rings. Picture a wall of gold-covered timber standing firm in the sand, humble wood made precious by its covering, each plain acacia board upright and shining and bound to its neighbors so that the frail linen and goat hair had a strong house to hang upon.

And then, at the close of all these instructions, comes the sentence that governs everything: so you are to set up the tabernacle according to the pattern shown you on the mountain. This is why the detail matters, and why God gave it in such careful measure. The tabernacle was not Moses’ invention, not a design worked up by clever hands, but a copy of a heavenly pattern that God Himself had shown him. Every curtain and clasp and gold-clad board was to match what God had revealed, because this tent was meant to be an earthly shadow of true and heavenly things. The worshiper was not free to improve upon it or reimagine it. He was to build it as God had shown, for it was God’s house, given by God’s plan, that God might dwell among His people exactly as He purposed.

Exodus 26:31-35 (BSB)

³¹ Make a veil of blue, purple, and scarlet yarn, and finely spun linen, with cherubim skillfully worked into it. ³² Hang it with gold hooks on four posts of acacia wood, overlaid with gold and standing on four silver bases. ³³ And hang the veil from the clasps and place the ark of the Testimony behind the veil. So the veil will separate the Holy Place from the Most Holy Place. ³⁴ Put the mercy seat on the ark of the Testimony in the Most Holy Place. ³⁵ And place the table outside the veil on the north side of the tabernacle, and put the lampstand opposite the table, on the south side.

Now we come to the heart of the whole chapter, and I would have you slow down and read these verses with reverence, for here God commands the veil. It was made of the same royal blue and purple and scarlet and fine linen as the inner ceiling, and worked into it, once again, were cherubim, the guardian angels. This curtain was hung across the inside of the tent to divide it into two rooms, and the text tells us plainly what the division meant: so the veil will separate the Holy Place from the Most Holy Place. On the near side stood the table and the lampstand, where the priests would serve day by day. On the far side, hidden behind the veil, stood the ark of the covenant with its mercy seat, and there, above the ark, the presence of God would dwell.

Understand what that hanging cloth was saying. God had come down to dwell among His people, near enough to touch, just on the other side of a curtain, and yet that very curtain barred the way in. Only the high priest could pass through it, and only once a year, and never without blood. The cherubim woven into it were the same guardians God had once stationed at the gate of Eden to keep fallen man from the tree of life, and here they stand again across the way to God’s presence, declaring in thread and dye that sin had not yet been dealt with and the road home was not yet open. The veil was mercy and barrier in one, God dwelling near, and the way to Him still closed.

And no believer can read of that veil without his heart running forward to the cross, for the Gospels tell us that in the hour the Lord Jesus died, the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom, split not from the bottom by the hand of man but from the top by the hand of God. What this chapter closes and guards, Christ threw open. The letter to the Hebrews says it in as many words, that we now have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, through the curtain, that is, through His flesh. The veil (פָּרֹכֶת) paroket, pronounced pah-ROH-ket. Strong's H6532, veil, curtain that screens or partitions off. Of all the words in this chapter, this is the one to carry home. The word carries the sense of a thing that shuts off, that screens and partitions, and that is exactly what it did: it closed the way into the innermost room where the ark rested and the presence of God abode. Woven with cherubim, hung on gold-covered posts, it was beautiful and it was a barrier, and every priest who served in the near room served with that curtain before his face, a daily reminder that he could come this far and no farther, that the holiest place was shut. that stood in Exodus 26 was always waiting to be torn.

For fifteen hundred years that veil hung and guarded, in the tent and then in the temple that came after it, and it never once invited a sinner in. And then, on the afternoon the Son of God gave up His spirit on the cross, the Gospels record that the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The barrier that no man had a right to pass was rent open by God Himself, from top to bottom, as if to say that the work was finished and the way was now clear. The letter to the Hebrews gathers up the whole meaning of the paroket in one breathtaking line, telling us that we may enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, His body. The veil of Exodus 26 was pointing, all along, to the flesh of Christ torn on the cross, so that the presence of God, once shut away behind the cherubim, now stands open to all who come to Him through the Son.

Exodus 26:36-37 (BSB)

³⁶ For the entrance to the tent, you are to make a curtain embroidered with blue, purple, and scarlet yarn, and finely spun linen. ³⁷ Make five posts of acacia wood for the curtain, overlay them with gold, use hooks of gold, and cast five bronze bases for them.

The chapter ends where a visitor would begin, at the doorway of the tent, with one more curtain, this one hung across the entrance so that the whole dwelling could be entered only by a way that God appointed. It too was embroidered with the royal colors and the fine linen, though the text does not weave cherubim into it, for this was a door meant to be passed through, not a barrier meant to bar the way. Hung on gold-covered posts set in bronze bases, it marked the single God-given entrance to His house, so that no one wandered in by his own path but came, if he came at all, by the way that God had made.

And so the tent stands finished in our imagination, curtain and covering and frame and veil and door, a portable dwelling for the God who chose to travel with His pilgrim people. Two curtains guard it, the great veil within, barring the way to the Most Holy Place, and this screen at the entrance, marking the one way in. Between them the priests would serve, day after day, in a house whose every thread whispered that God was near and yet that the way to His innermost presence was not yet open. All of it waited, as we now know, for the One who would be both the door and the torn veil, the way in that God Himself would open at the cost of His own body.