Exodus 31:9

“And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying” opens a fresh word from God. The name is Yᵉhôvâh, the personal name of Israel’s covenant God, which Strong’s explains as “the self-Existent or Eternal”, the God who made his name known to Moses at the bush (Exodus 3:14). The verb dâbar is the ordinary word to speak, mention or tell. Môsheh, Moses, comes from mâshâh, to draw out, the very reason given when he was named (Exodus 2:10). “Saying” (lemor) introduces God’s own words, so everything that follows in this passage is the LORD speaking.

The same opening runs through the books of Moses (Exodus 6:10, Leviticus 1:1) and marks the start of a new set of instructions. God has spoken to Moses in this way since he called him from the burning bush (Exodus 3:4), and at Sinai he spoke to him from the cloud and called him up the mount to receive the tables of stone (Exodus 19:9, Exodus 24:12). Moses stands between God and the people, and what he receives he passes on. He later reminds Israel that the LORD talked with them face to face at the mount (Deuteronomy 5:4), and God promises to raise up a prophet like Moses and put his words in his mouth (Deuteronomy 18:18). The God who spoke by the prophets “hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son” (Hebrews 1:1–2), and all Scripture is given by his inspiration (2 Timothy 3:16).

Where this falls matters. From Exodus 25 on, the LORD has told Moses what to make. It began with “let them make me a sanctuary; that I may dwell among them” (Exodus 25:8), and it went on to the ark, the table, the lampstand, the tent, the altar, the court and the priests’ garments. Exodus 30 ended with the altar of incense, the laver, the anointing oil and the incense. Now God turns from the things to be made to the people who will make them. He had promised to dwell among the children of Israel and be their God (Exodus 29:45–46), and here he provides the hands to build his dwelling.

“See” is râʼâh, the common verb for seeing, here a call to Moses to take notice of what God has already done. “I have called by name” uses qârâʼ, to call out to someone or address him by name. God chose this man himself, as he called Abram (Genesis 12:1) and as he called Moses at the bush (Exodus 3). Among the nations, a temple was usually the project of a king, built by guilds working under his patronage. Here God names a craftsman from among his own people.

The name Bᵉtsalʼêl, Bezaleel, probably means “in the shadow of God”, that is, under God’s protection. It fits a man whose skill came from God and whose work was done under God’s direction. His father was Uri, and his grandfather was Hur. A Hur went up the hill with Moses and Aaron during the battle with Amalek (Exodus 17:10) and was left with Aaron to hear the people’s matters while Moses was on the mount (Exodus 24:14). If this is the same man, Bezaleel came from a family already trusted in Israel’s service.

He was “of the tribe of Judah”, the tribe from which, Jacob said, “The sceptre shall not depart” (Genesis 49:10), the line of Israel’s kings and of the Messiah. The tribe of kings gives Israel its master craftsman, and God’s gifts reach across his people and across many kinds of service.

Bezaleel’s ability comes from God’s own filling. “Filled” is mâlêʼ, to fill, and “spirit” is rûwach, from a root meaning to blow or breathe, a word that means wind, breath and spirit. The Spirit of God who moved upon the face of the waters at creation (Genesis 1:2) now fills a man for the work of making God’s dwelling.

The Spirit comes “in wisdom, and in understanding, and in knowledge”. Wisdom, chokmâh, is practical skill, the ability to put what one knows to good use in real work. Understanding (tevunah) is discernment, the grasp of how things fit together, and knowledge (da’at) is acquaintance with the facts of the matter. Together they give Bezaleel everything a master builder needs, from seeing the design in his mind to carrying it out. “All manner of workmanship” uses mᵉlâʼkâh, work or employment, which Strong’s traces to a root meaning deputyship or ministry and describes as skilled work, never servile. The phrase comes back in verse 5.

So God gives his Spirit for the chisel and the furnace as well as for prophecy and leadership. Design, metalwork and carving become service to God when he calls someone to them and fills him for them. Moses later tells all Israel that the LORD has filled Bezaleel and Aholiab with these very gifts (Exodus 35:30–35).

Verse 4 begins with design. “To devise cunning works” pairs the verb châshab, whose root sense is to weave or plait and which comes to mean to think, plan or contrive, with the noun built from it, machăshâbâh, a contrivance, intention or plan. People ask whether “cunning” carries its modern sense of trickery here. In the English of the KJV it means skilful, so the phrase means to think out skilful designs. Bezaleel is gifted to conceive and plan intricate work as well as to make it, from the cherubim on the ark to the patterns of the priests’ garments. Wisdom speaks in Proverbs of this same gift: “I wisdom dwell with prudence, and find out knowledge of witty inventions” (Proverbs 8:12).

Then he is “to work in gold, and in silver, and in brass”. Gold, zâhâb, from a root meaning to shimmer, went into the things nearest God’s presence, the ark, the mercy seat and the lampstand. Silver went into the sockets under the boards of the tabernacle, its hooks and some of its utensils. The KJV’s “brass” is bronze, an alloy of copper and tin, strong and durable, used for the altar of burnt offering and the laver in the court. These metals cover the whole range of metalwork the tabernacle needed, from the most precious to the most hard-wearing.

Verse 5 adds stone and wood. “Cutting” and “carving” both render chărôsheth, mechanical work, the cutting or carving of hard material. The stones are above all the precious stones of the high priest’s breastplate, each engraved with the name of one of Israel’s tribes and set in gold (Exodus 28:17–21), so “to set them” is the fine work of mounting them. The timber is the acacia wood of the ark, the table, the altars and the framework of the tent (Exodus 25:10–30), as Exodus 25–27 sets out. “To work in all manner of workmanship” then gathers up everything else, so that every part of the work lies within the skill God gave.

God gives Bezaleel a partner. “And I, behold, I have given with him Aholiab”: the “I” is emphatic, and “with him” makes Aholiab a fellow worker. His name, ‘Ohŏlîyʼâb, means “tent of (his) father”, a fitting name for a man who would help build the tent of God. He was the son of Ahisamach, of the tribe of Dan. With one builder from Judah and one from Dan, the work of God’s house draws its builders from across his people. Aholiab’s own craft was likely weaving and embroidery, which would complement Bezaleel’s design and metalwork.

Then God widens the gift: “in the hearts of all that are wise hearted I have put wisdom”. “Wise hearted” joins châkâm, wise or skilful, and lêb, the heart, which in Scripture is the seat of mind, will and feeling, the whole inner person. These are people with an aptitude for craft, and God adds his own gift of chokmâh, the same wisdom he gave Bezaleel in verse 3. “Put” is nâthan, the everyday verb to give, used very widely for giving, putting, setting and making. God is the giver of the workers and of the wisdom in them.

The purpose follows: “that they may make all that I have commanded thee”. The gifts serve the commands. God gives skill so that his pattern will be built exactly as he showed it to Moses.

God then names everything the craftsmen are to make, from the tent itself to the oil and incense, gathering up in a few lines all he showed Moses in Exodus 25–30. Each item had already been described there in full, and naming them here puts every one of them into the builders’ hands.

The tabernacle was God’s dwelling among his people, and in Christ God came to dwell with us in person. “The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us” (John 1:14), and the Greek verb for “dwelt”, eskēnōsen, means “pitched his tent” or “tabernacled”. In him “dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily” (Colossians 2:9). Jesus spoke of his body as a temple: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” (John 2:19–21).

Bezaleel was filled with God’s Spirit for one great work. God gives the Spirit to his Son without measure (John 3:34). Christ is the wisdom of God (1 Corinthians 1:24), by whom and for whom all things were created (Colossians 1:16–17), and he builds a house of his own: “upon this rock I will build my church” (Matthew 16:18). Believers are built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ as the chief corner stone, into “an holy temple in the Lord”, a habitation of God through the Spirit (Ephesians 2:19–22). We are lively stones in a spiritual house and a holy priesthood (1 Peter 2:5), a royal priesthood (1 Peter 2:9), and the believer’s body is the temple of the Holy Ghost (1 Corinthians 6:19). Christ sends his people out with power from the Spirit to be his witnesses (Acts 1:8).

The things on God’s list point to him too. God set Christ forth “to be a propitiation through faith in his blood” (Romans 3:25), and the Greek word there can also name the mercy seat. He entered the holy place by his own blood, “having obtained eternal redemption for us” (Hebrews 9:11–12), so that we may “come boldly unto the throne of grace” (Hebrews 4:16). He is the bread of life (John 6:35), of which the showbread spoke, and the light of the world (John 8:12), of which the lampstand spoke. He is our great high priest (Hebrews 4:14), who “ever liveth to make intercession” for those who come to God by him (Hebrews 7:25), and he gave himself for us “an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweetsmelling savour” (Ephesians 5:2).

The altar points to “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29), offered once for all (Hebrews 9:26, Hebrews 10:10–14, Hebrews 7:27). The laver points to the cleansing Christ gives his church “with the washing of water by the word” (Ephesians 5:26), and so we draw near “with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water” (Hebrews 10:19–22).

The priests’ garments covered fallible men who needed atonement themselves. God “hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (2 Corinthians 5:21), and his people are clothed with the garments of salvation and the robe of righteousness (Isaiah 61:10), in fine linen, clean and white (Revelation 19:8). Christ is the Anointed One, and believers have “an unction from the Holy One” (1 John 2:20). The prayers of the saints rise before God’s throne in golden vials full of odours (Revelation 5:8). And where Israel was charged to do all that God commanded, Christ did all the Father’s will, “obedient unto death, even the death of the cross” (Philippians 2:8). The law had “a shadow of good things to come” (Hebrews 10:1), “but the body is of Christ” (Colossians 2:17).

This passage shows a God who speaks, who knows people by name, and who equips them for the work he gives. He asked Israel for a dwelling, and he supplied the builders, the wisdom in their hearts and the pattern they were to follow. He gave his Spirit for the work of hands, so that in his house design, metalwork, stone-setting, carving and weaving all served him. He drew his builders from Judah, from Dan and from every skilled heart, and he kept every part of worship under his own word.

All of it pointed to Christ, in whom God has come to dwell with us and through whom we draw near. The Spirit who filled Bezaleel now lives in God’s people, who are being built together into his temple. The Father seeks those who worship him in spirit and in truth (John 4:23–24), and his people offer him their whole selves as a living sacrifice (Romans 12:1) and stand in the armour he provides (Ephesians 6:11). Whatever gift we have came from him, and what he commands he also gives the grace to do.