Willing Hearts - Exodus 35

35:1-3 - It seems like the rest of the book of Exodus is just a re-iterating of things we’ve already gone over, mostly the commandments are told again, probably because it’s a new covenant after Israel broke their last one. Moses comes down off the mountain and tells the people what God told him, which is the commandments again. The first is “sex days shall work be done, but on the seventh day there shall be to you an holy day, a sabbath o rest to the Lord: whosoever doeth work therein shall be put to death. Ye shall kindle no fire throughout your habitations upon the sabbath day.”

What is interesting to me, and TB makes a good point of it as well, if why of all the commandments to be emphasized over and over again, why is it keeping the Sabbath day holy the one that is so important? Additionally, why is violation of the Sabbath punishable by death? Even when many other egregious crimes are not, like there are so many mitigating circumstances when it comes to causing the death of another person, but breaking the Sabbath equals death always, every time? Why is it so important? This really made me think about it, and honestly I think that I need to spend more time with it.

I thought that I was going to have more to say about this but I think I’m just going to think about why it might be the commandment that is pounded on over and over again. It’s not “do not murder… and a bunch of other things as well,” or “do not commit adultery, or lie, or steal, or whatever… and a bunch of other things as well.” It’s ALWAYS “keep the Sabbath day holy… and a bunch of other things as well.” It really makes me think why is it so important? Maybe because it requires a focus on God and no one else, kind of how the first commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, might, mind, and strength. The second commandment is to love others, but first to love God. I’m going to have to think about this some more.

One last note is that TB comments on the inability for the people of Israel to light fires on the Sabbath, and he said that the only reason that someone would light a fire during that time period would be to either keep themselves warm or to do work. He said that at this time there were other ways for the Hebrews to keep themselves warm besides fire and that they were eating manna at the time so they didn’t need fires to cook food. Very interesting to think about.

35:4-35 - With the people not being allowed to wear their “ornaments” anymore, now is the time for them to be donated in order to start building the tabernacle. God specified “whosoever is of a willing heart, let him bring it, an offering of the Lord.” They are supposed to bring gold, silver, brass, blue, purple, scarlet, fine linen, goats hair, all types of animal skins, oils, precious stones, etc. They were also to donate their time, skills, and talents to creating the tabernacle because it was going to take some pretty specific skills as well as simply just manual labor to create it. TB notes the significance of verse 22 which says “and they came, both men and women, as many as were willing hearted,” and donated their things and their time.

The importance here is that women were obviously included, which was unusual considering the highly patriarchal nature of ancient middle easter culture at the time. This wasn’t just a situation where the men were in charge and sat around bossing the women around, they were both equally working together side by side to create the tabernacle. This is just another example of Jesus Christ being the champion of women. It seems kind of counterintuitive to say that Christ champions women by giving them more work to do, but the whole purpose of Israel is a religious one. In order for the people of Israel as a whole to accept God and perpetuate a righteous society, it would have been crucial that the women were involved and felt invested in the relationship that God had with the people. If they had been excluded from contributing to or creating the tabernacle, then their interest or desire to teach the next generation matters of religion would have been diminished. An interesting commentary on an issue that affects our church today.

Lastly, God again calls the two men, Bezaleel and Aholiab, to be the main artists and architects for the tabernacle and “them hath he filled with wisdom of heart, to work all manner of work, of the engraver, and of the cunning workman.” It must have been so interesting to see what they came up with in terms of the artistic aspects of the tabernacle. I’m not creative at all, not even a little bit artistic, but I wish I was and I think what other people come up with is so incredible.