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God Gave Up Seven Heavens and Moved Into a Tent of Goat Hair

God's throne stood five hundred years above the seventh heaven. He left it all and asked freed slaves for scraps of wool so He could live among them.

Curated by Arthur · Told by Maggid ·
Table of Contents
  1. The Distance He Gave Up
  2. An Invitation Soft as the Word Speak
  3. The Offering That Had Three Forms
  4. How the Curtains and the Boards Were Joined
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The Distance He Gave Up

Five hundred years of travel separates the earth from the first heaven. Five hundred more from the first to the second, and the same again from each heaven to the next, all the way up through the seventh, and the Throne of Glory set higher still above the living creatures whose wings beat and whose voices thunder. That was where God lived, in a height so great that the distance between here and there took ten lifetimes simply to traverse.

He left it. He left the whole shining architecture of it, the angelic chambers and the rivers of fire and the vaults of hail and the storerooms of wind and the creatures whose faces are four and whose bodies are like burning coals, all of it, and He asked a band of former slaves for some goat hair and some acacia wood and some gold they had walked out of Egypt carrying, so He could move into a tent they would stitch together with their own hands in a desert.

The sages of the Yalkut Shimoni, the great thirteenth-century anthology, kept returning to the strangeness of this. They could not get past it. The God who made everything desired something small enough to carry.

An Invitation Soft as the Word Speak

The request came with a particular gentleness that the rabbis noticed. When God told Moses to collect the materials for the Tabernacle, the command opened with the word dabber, speak. Not command. Not instruct. Speak. The prophet Isaiah had used the same word when he wrote of consoling a broken city: speak to the heart of Jerusalem. The sages heard the same tenderness in both. You speak to the heart. You do not issue orders to someone whose gift you are receiving.

And God already owned everything. He said this Himself, in the psalms and through the prophets: the sea belongs to Me for I made it. The heavens and the earth and everything filling them already belong to Me. Why would the maker of all things ask for a donation from people who owned nothing but what they had carried out of a slave house? Not because He needed it. Because He was lonely for them and wanted them to build Him something. The tabernacle was not tribute. It was an invitation accepted.

The Offering That Had Three Forms

The materials came in through three annual collections, the half-shekel offering that every Israelite brought, which funded the daily sacrifices and the shared maintenance of the sanctuary. Three times a year the priests would collect from the chamber of offerings, and three times a year the household of God was provisioned from the gifts of the people it housed. The giving was built into the calendar, woven into the fabric of the year so that no single season would bear all the weight of upkeep.

The sages who traced the details of this found in the triple collection a pattern of reciprocity. God gave to Israel three great things, Torah and Temple and this world. Israel gave back in three annual installments. The accounting was not one-sided. Nothing in the relationship between God and Israel was ever one-sided, though one side held the heavens and the other held goat hair.

How the Curtains and the Boards Were Joined

When the tent went up, every piece had its proper partner and its proper place. The curtains were joined in sets of five, and the two sets were fastened to each other with loops and clasps of gold and bronze so the whole covering hung as one. The boards stood in their silver sockets, each socket a pair, two foundations under every board, because the law required two witnesses for every matter of weight and the sanctuary reflected that principle even in its architecture.

The joining of the curtains, the clasping together of two sets that had been separate, is where the rabbis saw the image of God and Israel brought together under one roof. The loops reached toward each other from opposite sides of the tent, and when the clasps went through, the two halves became one covering over one dwelling place. The image of reunion was built into the tent's own construction, visible every time it was raised.

Yalkut ShimoniTabernacleTemple VesselsDivine PresenceTempleShekhinahLoveCommandments
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The texts behind this telling. Some cards carry a translation of the source; others are our own retelling of it, and each card says which. Every card links out to the original.

Yalkut Shimoni on Torah 369:9Yalkut Shimoni on Torah

Translation of the source text.Torat Emet (Yalkut Shimoni) · CC-BY-NC

(Exodus 26:1-29) "And you shall make the Tabernacle of ten curtains." This is what Scripture says: "I have loved you, says the Lord" (Malachi 1:2). See what affection: "I have loved you." From the earth to the firmament is a journey of five hundred years, and likewise from the first firmament to the second, and from the second to the third, and from the third to the fourth, and from the fourth to the fifth, and from the fifth to the sixth, and from the sixth to the seventh; and there is no need to measure from the hooves of the holy living creatures, and the Throne is above them all. See how much I have cherished you, that I have left all of them and said to you: Make Me curtains of goats' hair and I will come to dwell beside you. Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi said: Had the nations of the world known what the Tabernacle and the Temple were worth to them, and so forth, why? Because before the Tabernacle was set up, the Divine speech would go out and enter into the houses of the nations of the world, and they would be loosened with terror, as it is said, "for who is there of all flesh" and so forth. You were able to hear it and live, but the nations of the world would hear and be loosened with terror inside their tents. And do not say only the Tabernacle, but even the Temple was a benefit to them. From where? That Solomon arranged his prayer: "And also concerning the stranger, who is not of Your people Israel, and so forth, You shall hear from heaven." But Israel, when one of them came to pray, what did he say? "And render to each man according to all his ways, whose heart You know" (1 Kings 8:39). But the stranger, whether they do or do not do, give him all that he demands, "so that all the peoples of the earth may know [Your name]." The Holy One, blessed be He, said to Moses: Make Me a Tabernacle, for I desire to dwell among My children. When the ministering angels heard this, they began to say: Master of the universe, why do You descend to those below? Your praise is that You be in the heavens, as it is said, "Set Your glory above the heavens" (Psalms 8:2). The Holy One, blessed be He, said to them: By your lives, I shall do as you have said, yet (in keeping with Habakkuk 3:3) "My praise has filled the earth." The Holy One, blessed be He, said to them: And why are you amazed at this? See how I cherish those below, and descend and dwell beneath curtains of goats' hair, as it is said, "And you shall make curtains of goats' hair." Rabbi Yehuda says: A great, large, pure beast grew in the wilderness, and from it he made the curtains. And Rabbi Nechemiah says: It was a work of miracles, and it was created for the moment and then hidden away. You may know this, for it is written, "the length of each curtain", who can bring you curtains of thirty cubits? From here you learn in accordance with Rabbi Nechemiah, that it was a work of miracles. And do not say only regarding the curtain, but even regarding the boards it was a work of miracles. From where did the boards come? Jacob our father planted them. When he went down to Egypt, he said to his sons: My sons, you are destined to be redeemed from here, and the Holy One, blessed be He, is destined to tell you, once you are redeemed, to make Him a Tabernacle; so arise and plant cedars, so that when He tells you to make a Tabernacle, the cedars will be available to you. Immediately they did as their father told them, and they arose and planted cedars. Our Rabbis said: The middle bar came down in the hand of Jacob our father to Egypt, that which ran from end to end. He did nothing but the cedars sang a song; this is what David said, "Then shall the trees of the forest sing" (1 Chronicles 16:33), and "then" means nothing but song, as it is said, "Then sang", when? When he made the Tabernacle. And the Holy One, blessed be He, said to Moses, "And you shall make the boards", those very boards that their father prepared for them. Our Rabbis taught: The boards were a cubit thick at the bottom and tapered upward until a fingerbreadth, as it is said, "they shall be complete at its top" (Exodus 26:24); and elsewhere it says, "they are complete, cut off", the words of Rabbi Yehuda. Rabbi Nechemiah says: Just as they were a cubit thick at the bottom, so were they a cubit thick at the top, as it is said, "together." But is it not written "complete"? That means that they be whole and not cut down by a saw. And the other, but is it not written "together"? That means that they not be detached from one another. Granted, according to Rabbi Nechemiah, this is what is written, "And for the rear of the Tabernacle westward you shall make six boards, and two boards you shall make for the corners of the Tabernacle" (Exodus 26:22-23), that the width of these comes and fills out the thickness of those. But according to Rabbi Yehuda, this one goes in and that one sticks out! He shaped them like mountains.

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Yalkut Shimoni on Torah 363:12Yalkut Shimoni on Torah

Translation of the source text.Torat Emet (Yalkut Shimoni) · CC-BY-NC

Another interpretation: Three offerings, corresponding to the three times in the year that they collect from the chamber. Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi said: A person who wished could give three shekels three times in the year, as it is said, "And we imposed upon ourselves commandments, to give yearly the third of a shekel" (Nehemiah 10:33). But was it not said only "half a shekel" (Exodus 30:13)? Rather, it speaks only of these three offerings.

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Yalkut Shimoni on Torah 369:11Yalkut Shimoni on Torah

Translation of the source text.Torat Emet (Yalkut Shimoni) · CC-BY-NC

"And he overlaid the bars with gold" (Exodus 26:29). How did he do it? He would bring two mouthpieces of gold, each one a cubit and a half long, and place them in the hollow of the board, in the place where the bar is set.

How did he set up the Tabernacle? He would bring ten curtains of blue, purple, scarlet, and fine twisted linen, as it is said, "And you shall make the Tabernacle with ten curtains" (Exodus 26:1, verse 1). Their thread was doubled thirty-two upon thirty-two, the words of Rabbi Nehemiah. For Rabbi Nehemiah used to say: one thread doubled into two, twisted into four, twined into eight, so that their thread comes to thirty-two doubled. But the Sages say: one thread doubled into two, twisted into three, twined into six, so that their thread comes to twenty-four doubled.

And he would join them into two sets of curtains, one of five and one of five, as it is said, "five of the curtains shall be joined together." He would join them with loops of blue, as it is said, "And you shall make loops of blue" (verse 4), and he would join them with fifty clasps of gold, and the clasps would appear in the Tabernacle like the stars in the firmament.

The length of the curtains was twenty-eight cubits, as it is said, "the length of one curtain shall be twenty-eight cubits" (verse 2), and their width forty cubits, as it is said, "and the breadth four cubits." Take from them thirty cubits from east to west, which he gives to the roof of the Tabernacle, and ten cubits for the western side of the Tabernacle, and the surplus of the curtains they spread out behind it.

He would bring eleven curtains of goats' hair, the length of each one being thirty cubits, as it is said, "And you shall make curtains of goats' hair" and so on (verses 7-8). And he would join them into two sets with loops, one of five and one of six, as it is said, "And he coupled the five curtains by themselves, and the six curtains by themselves" (verse 9), and he would join them in the loops with fifty clasps, as it is said, "And you shall make fifty loops," and it says, "And you shall make fifty clasps of bronze" (verse 11).

The width of the curtains was forty-four cubits, as it is said, "the length of the curtain" and so on. Take from them thirty cubits for the length of the Tabernacle and ten cubits which he gives to the height of the Tabernacle; one curtain remained over, which he folds over the face of the Tent, as it is said, "And you shall double over the sixth curtain" (verse 9). Rabbi Yose says: half of it was folded over the face of the Tent, and half of the curtain was folded behind the Tabernacle, as it is said, "And the overhanging part that remains" and so on.

He would bring one cover of leather, its length thirty and its width ten cubits, which clothes the Tent from east to west, as it is said, "And you shall make a covering for the Tent" (verse 14), and it was made above with a kind of stripes, the words of Rabbi Nehemiah. Rabbi Yehudah says: two coverings, the lower one of rams' skins dyed red and the upper one of tachash skins, as it is said, "its covering and the covering of tachash that is above it" (Numbers 4:25).

"The work of a skilled weaver" [choshev]. "The work of an embroiderer" [rokem]. Rabbi Ilai said: that they embroider in the place where they design. In a baraita it was taught: "embroiderer" is needlework, therefore one face; "skilled weaver" is the work of a loom, therefore two faces.

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