Exodus27chapter 27

Exodus 27:1-2

Exodus 40:6 places this altar before the door of the tent, so it is the first object anyone entering the court comes to. Its overlay is brass where everything inside the tent is gold, which carries on the grading of chapter 26, where the metal grows plainer the further out a thing sits. The horns are worked out of the same piece rather than fastened on, blood goes on them at Exodus 29:12, and Adonijah and then Joab later catch hold of them for their lives at 1 Kings 1:50 and 1 Kings 2:28.

Exodus 27:3-5

The list of vessels opens with the pans for the ashes, so the first tool named is the one for clearing away what the fire has already consumed. Leviticus 6:10 and 6:11 make that a daily priestly duty, done in linen garments and finished by carrying the ashes outside the camp to a clean place. Every item here is brass, including the grate that holds the fire, and no gold comes near this altar.

Exodus 27:6-8

Staves and rings mean the altar travels, and verse 8 says it is hollow with boards rather than solid. Exodus 20:24 and 20:25 had commanded an altar of earth, or one of stone left unhewn, and this is a frame built to be carried and filled. Verse 8 then repeats the refrain of Exodus 25:40 and Exodus 26:30, that it is made as it was shewed thee in the mount, and Hebrews 8:5 quotes that line and calls the whole structure the example and shadow of heavenly things.

Exodus 27:9-13

The word court occurs here for the first time in Scripture, and what it names is a wall of plain white linen a hundred cubits long by fifty broad. Its pillars stand in sockets of brass and are hooked and filleted with silver, so the perimeter repeats the tent's own order of metals with the plainest at the ground. Three sides get their hangings and their pillars counted out, and the east side is given only its width, because the gate goes there and verses 14 to 16 divide it.

Exodus 27:14-16

Fifteen cubits of linen on either hand leave twenty cubits of gate between them, and the gate is the one coloured thing in the whole perimeter. It uses the four materials of the vail at Exodus 26:31 and the door of the tent at Exodus 26:36, and like the door it is needlework and carries no cherubims, so the graded distinction of chapter 26 holds out here at the edge. The single way in faces east, the quarter Genesis 3:24 set the cherubims to keep, and Exodus 40:33 makes the hanging of the court gate the last thing Moses set up before the sentence So Moses finished the work.

Exodus 27:17-19

Every pillar in the perimeter is filleted with silver, and Exodus 38:25 to 28 says where that silver came from, the half shekel each man paid when he was numbered, with what remained after the hundred sockets made into hooks and fillets. The linen wall stands five cubits high, above the head of a man, so the court screened the altar from anyone standing outside it. The chapter then names the tent pins, and the smallest piece of the structure is specified along with the rest.

Exodus 27:20-21

The chapter turns from building to a standing duty, and it does so before Aaron is consecrated in chapters 28 and 29. The oil is beaten rather than milled, which is the first and clearest run, and the lamp is to be ordered from evening to morning every night. The phrase statute for ever occurs here for the first time in Scripture, and it falls on the first continuing obligation laid on the priesthood. Leviticus 24:2 to 4 gives the command again almost word for word, and 1 Samuel 3:3 dates the call of Samuel by a night when the lamp of God was close to going out.