The Tent Where God Met Them

Up on the mountain God had told Moses to build him something: a tent. Not a house of stone that had to stay in one place, but a tent that could be taken down and carried and put up again — because his people were going to be walking for a long time yet, and God meant to go with them. And the Lord said, “Let them make me a holy place, and I will be there among them.” So Moses told the people, and everyone who wanted to give brought something: gold and silver, blue and purple and scarlet thread, fine linen, goat hair, ram skins, sweet-smelling spices, and precious stones. They brought so much that at last Moses had to tell them to stop bringing — there was more than enough. And God gave two men, Bezalel and Eliab, the skill to make it all: to work in gold and silver and bronze, to cut stones and carve wood and weave beautiful cloth, and to teach others how.

And what they made was beautiful. There were curtains of fine linen with blue and purple woven through them, and coverings to go over the top, and posts of wood covered with gold, and a courtyard all around it with a screen at the door. Inside there was a golden lampstand with seven lamps that were lit every evening, and a golden table with bread set out on it, and a little golden altar where sweet incense burned, so the whole tent smelled of it. And in the room farthest in, behind a heavy curtain, there was a golden chest. Inside the chest were the two stone tablets with the ten words written on them. Nobody went into that room but once a year, and everybody knew what it was: the place where God met his people. And Aaron and his sons were washed and dressed in holy garments and set apart to serve there, to keep the lamps burning and to bring the people’s offerings before God.

It took a whole year. And then, on the first day of the first month of the second year after they came out of Egypt, the tent was put up. Moses set the posts in their places and slid in the bars and stretched the curtains over them. He brought in the golden chest and hung the curtain in front of it. He set the table in its place and laid out the bread; he set the lampstand in its place and lit the lamps; he set the golden altar in front of the curtain and burned the incense on it; and he set up the courtyard all around. And so Moses finished the work.

And then, while they were all standing there looking at it, the cloud came down and covered the tent — and the glory of the Lord filled it, until Moses himself could not go inside. And that is how they lived from then on. Whenever the cloud lifted up from the tent, the people packed everything and followed it. And whenever the cloud stayed, they stayed too, and did not move, until the day it went up again. For the cloud of the Lord was over the tent by day, and fire was over it by night, where every one of them could see it — all through their journey, every step of the way.