The Tabernacle and the Priesthood
c. 1445 or c. 1259 BC, traditional dateTraditional date
Following instructions given on Sinai, Israel builds a portable sanctuary to house the ark of the covenant. Aaron and his sons are ordained as its priests, and the yearly Day of Atonement is laid down.
During the forty days on Mount Sinai, Exodus says, Moses was told to collect gold, silver, bronze, fine cloth, skins and acacia wood from all who were willing to give. “Let them make me a sanctuary, that I may dwell among them”, after the pattern shown to him (Exodus 25:1–9). At its centre was to be the ark, a chest of acacia wood overlaid with gold, holding the tablets of the covenant. On it lay a cover of pure gold with two cherubim, and from above that cover God would speak with Moses (Exodus 25:10–22).
After the affair of the golden calf the work was carried out. The people brought more than was needed and had to be told to stop (Exodus 36:3–7). Bezalel of the tribe of Judah and Oholiab of the tribe of Dan directed the craftsmen (Exodus 35:30–35), who made the tent, the ark, the table, the lampstand, the altars and the priests’ vestments as Moses had been instructed (Exodus 39:32–43).
On the first day of the first month of the second year the tabernacle was set up. Moses put the tablets in the ark and the ark behind the veil (Exodus 40:17–21). The book of Exodus ends with the cloud covering the tent: “Yahweh’s glory filled the tabernacle”, and Moses could not go in. From then on the lifting of the cloud was the signal to break camp (Exodus 40:34–38).
Aaron and his four sons had been named as priests (Exodus 28:1). Moses washed them, clothed Aaron in the high priest’s vestments and anointed him, and they remained at the entrance of the tent for seven days (Leviticus 8:1–13) (Leviticus 8:33–36). On the eighth day Aaron offered his first sacrifices and blessed the people, and, Leviticus says, fire came out from before the Lord and consumed the offering on the altar (Leviticus 9:1–7, 22–24). Two of his sons, Nadab and Abihu, died for offering “strange fire” (Leviticus 10:1–3). Leviticus then lays down that the high priest may pass behind the veil only once a year, on the tenth day of the seventh month. On that day he brings blood to make atonement for the sanctuary and the people, and a second goat is sent into the wilderness carrying their sins (Leviticus 16:1–22) (Leviticus 16:29–34).
The tent and its ark went with Israel through the wilderness and were finally brought into Solomon’s temple (1 Kings 8:4–11). The letter to the Hebrews describes the tabernacle and the Day of Atonement and reads them as a figure of Christ, who “entered in once for all into the Holy Place” (Hebrews 9:1–12).
How this is dated
Traditional date. From later tradition or from internal biblical chronology, with no outside anchor.
Exodus dates the setting up of the tabernacle to the first day of the first month of the second year after the departure from Egypt (Exodus 40:17), and Numbers has the camp leave Sinai seven weeks later (Numbers 10:11–12). The calendar year is counted from the Exodus from Egypt and is as uncertain as that date: about 1445 BC if the exodus is put at about 1446 BC on the strength of (1 Kings 6:1) (Bryant G. Wood, “The Rise and Fall of the 13th-Century Exodus-Conquest Theory”, Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 48, 2005), or the year after an exodus of about 1260 BC under Ramesses II (Kenneth A. Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament, 2003). The biblical books are the only source for the tabernacle, and no remains of it are known. No Egyptian record of the exodus is known, and many scholars doubt that an exodus on the scale the Bible describes took place; the note on the Exodus from Egypt sets out the question. The timeline places the event at the earlier date and shows both.
Primary sources
In context
Grows out of
- c. 1446 or c. 1260 BC, traditional date
Leads to
- about 1070 BC, traditional date
- about 966 BC to 959 BC, estimated date