2. its horns. The horn-shaped projections at the four corners of the altar were, as archaeological investigation has established, a common feature of altars in the West Semitic world. One may surmise that the common Semitic association of horn (Hebrew qeren, the same word as Latin cornu and English “horn”) with strength may have led to this particular practice of cultic ornamentation, the horns somehow confirming or focusing the strength flowing down from the deity to the cultic site. Blood from the sacrifices was sprinkled on the horns of the altar, and so perhaps the horns might have been regarded as the most sacred places on the altar. On that basis, some scholars have reasoned that this is why a person seeking sanctuary would cling to the horns of the altar, although a simpler explanation might be that the horns were the only places on the altar where there was something to hold on to.

3. pails . . . shovels . . . basins . . . flesh-hooks . . . fire-pans. Biblical narrative is notoriously stingy in providing details of the paraphernalia of everyday life, in marked contrast to Homer. Oddly and instructively, the one genre of biblical literature in which such details, with the particularizing lexicon needed to indicate them, are abundantly displayed is in cultic legislation. (Again, the Priestly writer remains true to his own professional interests.) Every one of the utensils required for the elaborate procedure of catching the blood of an animal, shoveling up the ashes and residual fat (deshen), turning over the meat as it burns, raking off the coals from the fire, is patiently catalogued in this nonnarrative material.

8. as He showed you on the mountain, thus they shall do. This is a variation of the formula at the very end of chapter 25: God is now the subject of a transitive verb “to show” instead of the passive form used for Moses in 25:40. Here, moreover, there is a move from the singular “you” in the first clause to “they” in the second, the Israelites. This switch may reflect an ambiguity about the addressee of the laws of the Tabernacle. In narrative context, it would have to be Moses on the mountain. In rhetorical formulation, the laws sound as though they were addressed to an impersonal “you,” the representative Israelite who is obliged to perform all these instructions (and if this text was originally an independent unit of Priestly legislation, it could well have been directed to an impersonal Priestly “you”). This verse, then, appears to make an effort to anchor the cultic laws in the narrative setting by reminding us that everything is addressed to Moses, who will then pass on the orders to the Israelite people for implementation. The move from God as speaker to a third-person reference to the deity is in keeping with a general fluid usage in the Bible between first and third person.

14. flank. The Hebrew katef literally means “shoulder.” Several of the recurring architectural terms are transposed from anatomy to human constructions (e.g., tselaʿ, one of two words translated here as “side,” originally means “rib”).

18. fifty throughout. The literal meaning is “fifty in [by?] fifty,” evidently to stress that the width shall measure fifty cubits throughout.

19. So for all the vessels. The “so” is probably implied by the initial lE, which Umberto Cassuto, following Gesenius, characterizes as a “lamed of inclusion.”

20. clear oil of beaten olives. Olive oil would have been the most expensive kind of oil in the ancient Near East (sesame oil was cheaper and more common), and in contrast to ordinary practice, in which cloudy oil would be used for burning and clear oil for culinary purposes, only the best oil is to be burned in the lamps. The olives are to be beaten (katit) with mortar and pestle rather than crushed in a press, the latter being a less labor-intensive process. Egypt, it should be noted, did not typically cultivate olive trees, and it imported olive oil at a premium from Canaan and Phoenicia. It is thus extremely unlikely that the fleeing slaves would have been able to bring with them supplies of fine olive oil, or to obtain it in the wilderness, so this instruction is another clear instance in which a detail of the later Jerusalem cult is retrojected onto the Wilderness period.

to kindle a lamp perpetually. The Hebrew tamid means “perpetually,” or “regularly repeated.” Despite the attachment of later Jewish tradition to an “eternal light” (the conventional English rendering of the two words here, ner tamid), the clear indication of the next verse, confirmed by the sanctuary story of young Samuel and Eli in 1 Samuel 2, is that the lamp burned from evening until daybreak and was lit again each evening.

21. the Tent of Meeting. This is a synonym for the Tabernacle, stressing the notion that within this tent God “meets,” or has fixed occasions of encounter (moʿed) with the people through Moses and the high priest.

the Ark of the Covenant. As before, “Ark” is merely implied in the Hebrew.