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Moses did a final inspection of the items to make sure they matched what God showed to him on the Mountain. God had revealed these things plainly to Moses.
In the last days, we see the song of Moses and the Lamb. Moses’s song comes before the song of the Messiah, which shows us that we have to understand Moses before we can understand the Messiah.
The first garment discussed in this chapter is the garments of the High Priest. We look at the Levitical priesthood as though it’s no longer relevant. God set them up for a reason, for us to understand something about God. God didn’t set them up just to destroy them later. Their ministry and the Tabernacle furniture shows us something about God.
All these designs were God’s designs, the men and women who made the tabernacle, the furniture and the garments did not design these things. These were designed by God Himself and we can learn a little bit about God and what things God holds dear when we contemplate these things.
Some of these garments were worn daily but some were only worn on special occasions, particularly on Yom haKippurim, the Day of Atonement.
One of the key pieces of the High Priest’s garment was the breastplate with the 12 stones representing the 12 tribes of Israel (Ex. 39:8–21). There were 12 apostles with stones associated with them, and the order of their stones in the foundation of the New Yerushalayim appears to be in reverse order from that of the breastplate (Rev. 21:19–20). That’s God’s choosing, not ours.
| List of breastplate stones1Ex. 39:10–13 | Baraita2quoted by Tobias ben Eliezer in לקח טוב Laqakh Tov on Ex. 28:10, Exodus Rabbah on 38:8 and Targ. on Cant. 5:14, based on Ex. 1:2–3 | Targ. Yer. on Num. 2:23 based on the camps of the tribes around the Tabernacle in Num. 2:1–31 | Birth order of Ya’akob sons4 Josephus (Antiq. 3.7.5) | Stones order based on the Zodiac5Josephus and Philo said the stones order is linked to the Zodiac; Sefer Yetzira gave this Zodiac order of the tribes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| אֹדֶם ’odem (H124): ruby | Reuben | Yehudah | Reuben | Yehudah |
| פִּטְדָה pitdah (H6357): topaz | Shimon (Simeon) | Issachar | Shimon | Issachar |
| בָּרֶקֶת bareqet (H1304a): emerald | Levi | Zebulun | Levi | Zebulun |
| נֹפֶךְ nofekh (H5306): turquoise, carbuncle | Yehudah (Judah) | Reuben | Yehudah | Reuben |
| סַפִּיר sappir (H5601): sapphire | Issachar | Shimon | Dan | Shimon |
| יָהֲלֹם yahalom (H3095): diamond, sardonyx | Zebulun | Gad | Naphtali | Gad |
| לֶשֶׁם leshem (H3958): jacinth, amber | Dan | Levi | Gad | Ephraim |
| שְׁבוֹ shevo (H7618): agate | Naphtali | Ephraim | Asher | Manasheh |
| אַחְלָמָה ’achlamah (H306): amethyst | Gad | Manasheh (Manasseh) | Issachar | Ben-Yamin |
| תַּרְשִׁישׁ tarshish (H8658): beryl, chalcedony | Asher | Dan | Zebulun | Dan |
| שֹׁהַם shoham (H7718): onyx, beryl | Yosef (Joseph) | Asher | Yosef (Ephraim & Manasheh) | Asher |
| יָשְׁפֵה yashefeh (H3471): jasper | Ben-Yamin (Benjamin) | Naphtali | Ben-Yamin | Naphtali |
Colors come from light. Reuben is seen as a dark, deep red, while Joseph is black, which is the absence of color.
I want to talk about the High Priest’s robe.
“Then he made the robe of the ephod of woven work, all of blue; and the opening of the robe was at the top in the center, as the opening of a coat of mail, with a binding all around its opening, so that it would not be torn.” (Ex. 39:22–23)
It was trimmed with blue, purple and scarlet pomegranates with a gold bell in between which pomegranates, which represents crowns and royalty. The bells have nothing to do with warning people about the high priest’s movements. There’s nowhere in the Torah that states that the bells were an early-warning system of the high priest’s life or death.
Isa. 6:1 shows us the hem of God’s robe or skirt encompassed the entire temple. Jer. 13:22-27 says, “If you say in your heart, ‘Why have these things happened to me?’ because of the magnitude of your iniquity your hem have been removed and your heels have been exposed.”
When the woman with the issue of blood touched Yeshua’s robe, she was healed. She touched the hem of the real High Priest’s garment and was healed. The hem of the garment is a message to us. It’s something for us to wear to remind us of God’s commandment.
Every piece of furniture had its own exclusive place. Every item had its irreplaceable function in God’s house. We were all brought to God’s High Priest first. Yeshua the High Priest presented us to the Father. When God calls us to Himself, He calls us to our irreplaceable task too.
The most common refrain in Exodus 40 is “as the LORD commanded Moses.” God trained the people to stay where He stayed and move when He moved.
Reader: Jeff. Speaker: Richard. Summary: Tammy.
Note: Word lexicon numbers correspond to the Strong’s Concordance system.
Banner Photo: Drawing from the book The Bible and Its Story (1908) written by Charles F. Horne & Julius August Brewer. Available via Wikipedia Commons.