tab ́ẽr-na-k'l (מועד אהל, ‘ōhel mō‛ēdh “tent of meeting,” משׁכּן, mishkān, “dwelling”; σκηνή, skēnḗ):
Altars sacred to Yahweh were earlier than sacred buildings. Abraham built such detached altars at the Terebinth of Moreh (Genesis 12:6, 12:7), and again between Beth-el and Ai (Genesis 12:8). Though he built altars in more places than one, his conception of God was already monotheistic. The “Judge of all the earth” (Genesis 18:25) was no tribal deity. This monotheistic ideal was embodied and proclaimed in the tabernacle and in the subsequent temples of which the tabernacle was the prototype.
The first step toward a habitation for the Deity worshipped at the altar was taken at Sinai, when Moses builded not only “an altar under the mount,” but “12 pillars, according to the 12 tribes of Israel” (Exodus 24:4). There is no recorded command to this effect, and there was as yet no separated priesthood, and sacrifices were offered by “young men of the children of Israel” (Exodus 24:5); but already the need of a separated structure was becoming evident. Later, but still at Sinai, after the sin of the golden calf, Moses is stated to have pitched “the tent” (as if well known: the tense is frequentative, “used to take the tent and to pitch it”) “without the camp, afar off,” and to have called it, “the tent of meeting,” a term often met with afterward (Exodus 33:7 ff). This “tent” was not yet the tabernacle proper, but served an interim purpose. The ark was not yet made; a priesthood was not yet appointed; it was “without the camp”; Joshua was the sole minister (Exodus 33:11). It was a simple place of revelation and of the meeting of the people with Yahweh (Exodus 33:7, 33:9-11). Critics, on the other hand, identifying this “tent” with that in Numbers 11:16 ff; 12:4 ff; Deuteronomy 31:14-15 (ascribed to the Elohist source), regard it as the primitive tent of the wanderings, and on the ground of these differences from the tabernacle, described later (in the Priestly Code), deny the historicity of the latter. On this see below under B, 4, (5).
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Author: International Std. Bible Encyclopedia
Keywords: Tabernacle, Tent of meeting, Sanctuary
Source: James Orr (editor), The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, 5 volume set.
Page indexed by: inWORD Bible Software.