Exodus39chapter 39

Exodus 39:1

The chapter opens on the phrase it repeats seven times, as the Lord commanded Moses, and the first thing named is cloths of service for the holy place. The Hebrew root behind service here is the one Exodus 1:14 used five times over for the bondage in Egypt, where the people served with rigour. Exodus begins with service to Pharaoh and closes with an order of service to God, and the book is the transfer between them.

Exodus 39:2-3

Gold is beaten into thin plates and cut into wires so it can be worked into the blue, the purple, the scarlet and the linen, and this is the only place in Scripture that describes how the thread was made. Adam Clarke argues the Israelites already knew how to draw gold wire, and that a beaten plate gave a more solid figure than a drawn thread would. The metal itself came out of Egypt at Exodus 12:35, where the people asked their neighbours for jewels of silver and gold, and the same gold went into the calf at Exodus 32:3.

Exodus 39:4-7

Two onyx stones sit on the shoulders of the ephod with the names of the tribes cut into them as a signet is cut, and the text gives the reason, that they should be stones for a memorial to the children of Israel. Memorial first occurs in Scripture at Exodus 3:15, where God applies the word to his own name, and here what is carried in memorial is the name of every tribe. Aaron goes nowhere in this garment without the whole nation on him.

Exodus 39:8-14

The breastplate carries the same names a second time, twelve stones in four rows, each engraved like a signet, and Exodus 28:29 says Aaron bears them upon his heart when he goes into the holy place. It is a span square and made double, so it forms a pouch. The making account never mentions the Urim and the Thummim that Exodus 28:30 puts inside it, and Leviticus 8:8 is where Moses sets them in. Adam Clarke holds that several of these stones can no longer be identified with confidence and sends the reader back to Exodus 28:17.

Exodus 39:15-21

Rings, wreathen chains and a lace of blue bind the breastplate to the ephod, and the paragraph ends by stating its purpose, that the breastplate might not be loosed from the ephod. That is the one purpose clause among seven verses of fastenings, and the rest is method. The names of the tribes are fixed to the garment so that they stay on it.

Exodus 39:22-26

The robe is woven in one piece, all of blue, and the opening for the head is bound with a band so that it should not rend. Bells of pure gold alternate with pomegranates around the hem, and Exodus 28:35 gives the reason for the bells, that his sound shall be heard when he goeth in unto the holy place before the Lord, and that he die not. The high priest is heard before he is seen.

Exodus 39:27-29

Aaron and his sons share the linen, the coats and the mitre and the bonnets and the breeches and a girdle of needlework. What the sons wear is linen, while the gold, the stones and the engraved plate belong to Aaron, and the chapter grades the priesthood by its cloth without saying why. Ezekiel 44:17 and 44:18 keep linen as the ministering cloth in the temple Ezekiel is shown.

Exodus 39:30-31

the plate of the holy crown of pure gold: A plate of pure gold is engraved like a signet with the words HOLINESS TO THE LORD and tied by a lace of blue to the front of the mitre. Holy first occurs in Scripture at Exodus 3:5, of the ground Moses is standing on at the bush, and holiness first occurs at Exodus 15:11 in the song at the sea. Exodus 28:38 says what the plate is for, that Aaron may bear the iniquity of the holy things which the children of Israel shall hallow. The last thing made for the priesthood is a sentence the priest wears on his forehead.

Exodus 39:32

Genesis 2:1 reads Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and this verse opens with the same construction over a tent. The echo runs on into 39:43 and into 40:33, where Moses finished the work as God ended his work on the seventh day at Genesis 2:2. The instructions themselves came in seven divine speeches across chapters 25 to 31, and the seventh of them, at 31:12, was the sabbath.

Exodus 39:33-41

Everything made is carried to Moses and listed piece by piece, from the tent and its boards through the ark and the mercy seat to the table, the candlestick, the two altars, the laver and the court. John Gill reads the bringing as an inspection, so that Moses could see whether the work matched the pattern he was shown in the mount and the instructions he had given the workmen. The inventory closes on the cloths of service and the holy garments for Aaron, which is where the chapter began at verse 1.

Exodus 39:42

The refrain as the Lord commanded Moses falls seven times in this chapter, at verses 1, 5, 7, 21, 26, 29 and 31, and this verse gathers them into one statement over the whole build. Readers find chapters 35 to 40 repetitive, and the repetition is the report itself, that this time the people did exactly what they were told. It stands seven chapters after Exodus 32, where the same people brought the same gold to Aaron and made a calf out of it.

Exodus 39:43

The sentence is built like Genesis 1:31, where God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. Here the behold falls on obedience, that they had done it as the Lord had commanded, even so had they done it. Moses then blesses them, as God blessed the seventh day at Genesis 2:3, and Adam Clarke sends the reader to that verse for the sense the word carries here.