Scripture Daily

Context No. 308 of 4322 · Exodus

Context · Reflection

Exodus 27:1-8: in context

1“You shall make the altar of acacia wood, five cubits long, and five cubits wide. The altar shall be square. Its height shall be three cubits. 2You shall make its horns on its four corners. Its horns shall be of one piece with it. You shall overlay it with bronze. 3You shall make its pots to take away its ashes; and its shovels, its basins, its meat hooks, and its fire pans. You shall make all its vessels of bronze. 4You shall make a grating for it of network of bronze. On the net you shall make four bronze rings in its four corners. 5You shall put it under the ledge around the altar beneath, that the net may reach halfway up the altar. 6You shall make poles for the altar, poles of acacia wood, and overlay them with bronze. 7Its poles shall be put into the rings, and the poles shall be on the two sides of the altar when carrying it. 8You shall make it hollow with planks. They shall make it as it has been shown you on the mountain.

This is the blueprint for the altar of burnt offering, the place where Israel's sacrifices were made, and it reads like a builder's spec sheet: acacia wood five cubits square, horns at the four corners, a bronze overlay, pots and shovels and basins, a bronze grating. Easy to skim as pure carpentry. But two small instructions in it are worth catching, because they say something about how God chose to be met.

The first is at the very end: you shall make it hollow, with planks. The altar was not a solid block of bronze or stone. It was a wooden frame, empty inside, sheathed in bronze so it looked heavy and permanent while actually being light enough to move. And that connects to the second instruction, the rings and the poles. This altar was built to be carried. It had two poles that slid through rings on its sides so it could be lifted and moved whenever Israel broke camp. The place of sacrifice, the place where sins were atoned and offerings made, was portable. It traveled with the people through the wilderness. God did not fix the one spot where he could be met and require them to keep returning to it. The altar came along on the journey, hollow and light so it could keep moving with a people who were always moving.

There is something freeing in that. The meeting place with God was designed to travel, to be available wherever the people happened to be pitched that week. Have I decided I can only really meet God in some fixed place or settled season, when the altar itself was built light and hollow precisely so it could go wherever I go?

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