Exodus35chapter 35

Exodus 35:1-3

The building of the tabernacle opens with the sabbath, which is where the seven speeches of instruction ended at 31:12-17. What closed the command opens the work. The one kind of work named is the kindling of fire, and every craft the chapter is about to call for needs it, since gold and silver and brass have to be melted and dyed thread has to be boiled. Genesis 2:2-3 has God resting on the seventh day and never uses the noun, which first occurs at Exodus 16:23.

Exodus 35:4-9

The offering is asked of whosoever is of a willing heart, with no rate set and no man named. The materials are the goods of Egypt, which Exodus 12:35-36 says the people asked for and were given on the night they left, and which Genesis 15:14 had promised when it said they would come out with great substance. The list runs from gold down to badgers' skins in the same graded order the finished structure keeps, precious metal innermost and plain hide outside.

Exodus 35:10-14

Skill is described here as wisdom, and the phrase governs the chapter, falling on the workmen at verse 10, on the women at verse 25, and on the two named masters at verse 35 where it reads wisdom of heart. The word wisdom first occurs in Scripture at Exodus 28:3, where it is given to craftsmen making priestly garments, before any king is said to have it. The inventory begins with the tabernacle and its boards, where chapter 25 began with the ark, so this is the order a builder works in rather than the order God spoke in.

Exodus 35:15-19

The list ends at the cloths of service and the holy garments for Aaron the priest and his sons, so the last thing to be made is what a man wears to minister. Aaron is named in his office three chapters after he took the people's gold and made the calf at 32:2-4, and the text sets the two down without a word between them. Exodus 28:3 had already assigned those garments to the wise hearted, which is the same class of workman this chapter has been calling for.

Exodus 35:20-22

They go back to their tents and return carrying bracelets, earrings, rings and tablets of gold. Exodus 32:2-3 has the same people breaking off the same golden earrings and handing them to Aaron, and what came out of that was a calf. The metal is the same metal and the giving is as ready in both places, and this chapter records the second occasion without mentioning the first. The text says the heart stirred him up and the spirit made him willing, and it uses no word of compulsion anywhere in the chapter.

Exodus 35:23-24

Giving is measured by what a man happened to have, since the phrase with whom was found governs both verses. Silver stands in this freewill list, and Exodus 30:11-16 had already levied silver at a fixed half shekel from every man numbered. Exodus 38:27-28 keeps the two apart in the finished work, the hundred talents of levied atonement money cast into the hundred sockets that carry the frame, and the freewill remainder made into hooks and fillets for the pillars.

Exodus 35:25-26

The women's work is recorded twice and by its craft, spinning the blue and purple and scarlet and fine linen, then spinning goats' hair. Those are the two innermost coverings of chapter 26, the linen curtains worked with cherubims and the tent of goats' hair laid over them, so the fabric of the dwelling place came off their distaffs. The same wise hearted that verse 10 used of the workmen is used of them.

Exodus 35:27-29

The rulers come last in the account and what they bring is the stone for the ephod and the breastplate. Exodus 28:9-12 engraves those two onyx stones with the names of the children of Israel and sets them on the high priest's shoulders for a memorial, so the men who head the tribes supply the stones that will carry the tribes' names before the LORD. The paragraph closes by calling the whole of it a willing offering and by putting it back under what the LORD had commanded by the hand of Moses.

Exodus 35:30-33

Moses reports a calling rather than making an appointment, and the man is called by name. Exodus 31:3 said the same of him, and it is the first place in Scripture a person is said to be filled with the Spirit of God, given for working metal, cutting stone and carving wood. The Hur named as his grandfather carries the name of the man who held up Moses' hands at Rephidim in 17:12 and was left over the people with Aaron at 24:14, and the older commentators take them for one man.

Exodus 35:34-35

The gift carries an instruction to teach it, so the skill is meant to leave the two men who hold it. Bezaleel is of Judah and Aholiab of Dan, and Numbers 10:14 and 10:25 set those two tribes at the head and at the rear of the whole march. The closing verse names the trades one by one, engraver, cunning workman, embroiderer and weaver, and says God filled them for all of it.