Be a Bezaleel of the Spiritual Tabernacle

A diagram of the tabernacle from the eleventh century manuscript Sinai Greek 1186.

We read in the Book of Exodus that a thick cloud descended upon Mount Sinai, with thunders and lightnings, and the voice of the trumpet exceeding loud. Moses went up to the top of the mount and was there forty days and forty nights. There, he received the Tablets of the Law. There, also, he beheld the tabernacle in sacred vision, and was commanded to make the same upon earth, that the worship offered here below should be ‘unto the example and shadow of heavenly things’ (Hebrews 8:5). ‘And let them make me a sanctuary; that I may dwell among them. According to all that I shew thee, after the pattern of the tabernacle, and the pattern of all the instruments thereof, even so shall ye make it’ (Exodus 25:8-9).

God also commanded Moses that the construction of the tabernacle should be the work of Bezaleel. ‘I have filled him with the spirit of God, in wisdom, and in understanding, and in knowledge, and in all manner of workmanship’ (Exodus 31:3). He was to create the objects for the tabernacle, but in doing so he was to remain faithful to the pattern that had been revealed to Moses upon the mount.

Vincent of Lerins, in the fifth century, saw in this an important spiritual lesson. He writes,

O Timothy! O Priest! O Expositor! O Doctor! If the divine gift has qualified you by wit, by skill, by learning, be a Bazaleel of the spiritual tabernacle, engrave the precious gems of divine doctrine, fit them in accurately, adorn them skilfully, add splendor, grace, beauty. Let that which formerly was believed, though imperfectly apprehended, as expounded by you be clearly understood. Let posterity welcome, understood through your exposition, what antiquity venerated without understanding. Yet teach still the same truths which you have learned, so that though you speak after a new fashion, what you speak may not be new.