What Does Exodus 26:2 Mean?

"You shall make forty-eight frames for the tabernacle of acacia wood. Twenty frames for the south side. And you shall make forty sockets of silver under the twenty frames, two sockets under one frame for its two tenons, and two sockets under the next frame for its two tenons. And for the second side of the tabernacle, on the north side, twenty frames, with their forty sockets of silver, two sockets under one frame and two sockets under the next frame. For the rear of the tabernacle westward you shall make six frames.

And you shall make two frames for corners of the tabernacle in the rear." The forty-eight acacia-wood frames (qerashim, boards/planks) that form the tabernacle's wall structure are each set in two silver socket-bases (adonim, lords/sockets: the root of "lord" applied to structural supports that carry the frame). The silver-socket foundations of the tabernacle frames are made from the silver collected in the census ransom of Exodus 30:12-16: every Israelite's half-shekel ransom payment becomes the structural base of the tabernacle. The community's ransom-silver is literally the foundation of the divine dwelling.

The gold crossbars (berichim) that lock the frames together, five bars per side, with the middle bar running the full length of the wall through rings, create the structural integrity of the tabernacle frame: the individual boards become one coherent wall through the through-running bar. The connector-bar that unites the individual frames into a wall is an architectural image of covenant unity: diverse parts held together by the passing-through connective system. The tabernacle's architectural theology is communal unity through structural connection.

The veil (parochet) that divides the holy place from the holy of holies is made of the same blue-purple-scarlet linen with cherubim as the inner curtains: the veil is continuous in material with the tabernacle's interior beauty but functions as the separation between the ordinary priestly service (holy place) and the once-yearly High Priestly access (holy of holies).

The veil's tearing at Jesus' death (Matthew 27:51, "the veil of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom") is the most dramatic New Testament use of tabernacle architecture: the parochet that separated humanity from YHWH's throne-room presence is torn open, making the way into the holiest place accessible to all through Christ's sacrifice (Hebrews 10:19-20).