Exodus37chapter 37

This chapter records the making of the ark, the table, the lampstand and the two altars, repeating the pattern given in chapters 25 to 30. The corpus holds five commentaries on it, fewer than on any other chapter of this span, and the classical reading turns on one name and one omission. Rashi asks why the ark alone is credited to Bezalel by name. His answer is that "he gave himself over to the work more whole-heartedly than the other wise men" (Rashi on Exodus 37:1:1, citing Midrash Tanchuma, Vayakhel 10). Ramban notes that the anointing oil and the incense are reported in a single line here, where the other work is described in full. He gives the reason the text breaks its own habit at this point (Ramban on Exodus 37:29:1, the Chavel translation, CC-BY). Sforno reads the word holy of the anointing oil as a statement about how long it would last. He ties it to the wording of Exodus 30:31 (Sforno on Exodus 37:29:1, from Eliyahu Munk, HaChut Hameshulash, CC-BY). The incense is called pure because every foreign element had been taken out of the spices (Sforno on Exodus 37:29:2). Rashi is quoted from the Rosenbaum and Silbermann edition of 1929 to 1934, public domain. Ibn Ezra comments at Exodus 37:1:1 under a licence that keeps his text off this page.