Exodus 26 – The Architecture of the Tabernacle
This is a good post for all of you who are math-minded or used to enjoy playing with Lego or K’nex as a kid.
The architecture of the Tabernacle has long baffled scholars. We don’t know what Moses saw on the mountain, nor do we have the structure that was so frequently on the move in the wilderness. We have a fairly detailed description of what the holy tent was supposed to look like in Exodus 26, but even that has some silences, gaps and ambiguities that make it difficult to piece everything together perfectly.
Take the problem of the width of the Tabernacle, for example. In almost every book or commentary that has a picture of the Tabernacle, it is almost always a perfect rectangle, 15’ high, 15’ wide, 45’ long. The Holy of Holies would then be 15’ x 15’ x 15’, a perfect cube, with the Holy Place being twice that length.
It is very easy to find that height and length. Since I detailed this in the sermon, I won’t reiterate it here. The width, though, is much more difficult. Moses is told that the rear of the Tabernacle is made of six frames that are each 1.5 cubits, or 2’ 3” in width. So 6 x 2’ 3” = 13’ 6”. This falls a foot and a half short of the 15’ width.
But there are also two corner frames for the rear. The dimensions are not given. If we assume all the frames are the same width (as the text explicitly says in 26:17), then the rear width turns out to be 8 frames x 2’ 3” = 18’. So now we have three extra feet wider than the traditional 15’ view!
But those two corner frames are certainly different than the others. The text tells us in verses 23-24 that they are separate on the bottom and joined at the top, in sort of an A-frame trellised shape. This may very well be the crux of the Tabernacle’s design right here (see Propp, Exodus 19-40, 503). How do these corner frames fit with the rest of the normal frames? If they are indeed A-frames, does this mean we count only half their width into our calculations (at least at the top)? If so, the numbers still wouldn’t add up to 15’. We’d get close, at 15’ 3”. But this still isn’t the perfect rectangle that all our pictures imagine.
Scholars have pictured a number of different possible ways to understand the shape of the Tabernacle. Douglas Stuart of the New American Commentary series postulates a solid isosceles trapezoid shape to the Tabernacle (588). It should be noted, though, that he does not see the text as a very clear or complete picture of the tent (three times in a single paragraph he says, “we do not know”!; 588-589).
Duane Garrett’s commentary in the Kregel Exegetical Library series gives a hearty argument for a more traditional tent-like shape with similarities to Stuart’s conception. One of the more creative suggestions in recent years was put forth by Richard Elliot Friedman. Friedman argues in a number of his works that the Tabernacle frames are overlapping and that the fabric on top was folded in half. Thus, the Tabernacle was not nearly as big as the traditional views suppose. His view has the Tabernacle at 20 cubits long x 10 cubits high x 8 cubits wide (30’ x 15’ x 12’). This takes 15’ off the length and 3’ off the traditional width. This would also allow the entirety of the Tabernacle to fit inside Solomon’s temple.
As clever and intriguing as this is, it has been soundly rejected by other scholars, especially Victor Hurowitz (“The Form and Fate of the Tabernacle: Reflections on a Recent Proposal” in Jewish Quarterly Review 86 [1995]; see Schnittjer, The Torah Story, 266-7 for more discussion) and Propp (ibid., 503-4).
The coverings themselves should give us some clues. When all stitched and clasped together, the inner Tabernacle curtain measured 60’ x 42’. The second layer of goats’ hair measured 66’ x 45’. If the Tabernacle was the traditional rectangle shape, the inner curtain would cover the top and the rear exactly (60’) and the sides would come down to within a foot and a half off the ground on each side (one cubit of space on each side).
The goats’ hair curtain would cover the top and rear, with the excess 6’ hanging off the front, doubled over (24:9). As for the sides, at 45’ it would exactly cover both sides to the ground. This is what 24:13 anticipates: “And the extra that remains in the length of the curtains, the cubit on the one side, and the cubit on the other side, shall hang over the sides of the tabernacle, on this side and that side, to cover it” (ESV). The text does not say this curtain touches the ground, but it makes sense that there would not be a gap all around the Tabernacle, allowing anyone to peer inside.
If the Tabernacle were in a trapezoidal shape, assuming the sides were all still 15’, this would actually lower the overall height of the Tabernacle [see diagrams below].
If it were indeed lower, that would mean the curtains would drape onto the ground behind the Tabernacle going lengthwise, something the text undoubtedly would have had to deal with (as it does with the extra lengths for the goats’ hair curtain in 26:9, 12-13).
Therefore, in my estimation, I still think that the traditional view is the way to go. I am unsure how the corner brackets looked or functioned, but we can assume that they fit within the scheme without lengthening or decreasing the cubic shape of the Holy of Holies. There may have been some excess frame jutting from the rear sides, but perhaps this was covered with the excess folds that would have been produced from the material in the rear corners.
Whichever way we look at it, there are difficulties. Some ideas make more sense of the text than others, and it seems to me that the traditional explanation still remains the most plausible. Until some other information is uncovered regarding those pesky corner frames, we may have to simply wait until we see the real thing in glory to have a better idea of how it was constructed.
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