11/26/2024 – Day 156 – Exodus – Chapters 37 – 40 / Chapter 38 – Making the Altar of Burnt Offering
Last Cycle, there is an interview of Dennis Prager from Dallas Baptist University on the book of Exodus, dated 06/13/2022.
Today, I will share a footnote from chapter 38 in my “Apologetics Study Bible:
“38: 24-25 It seems surprising that slaves in Egypt would have possessed the 2,200 pounds of gold and 7,545 pounds of silver needed for the construction of the tabernacle and its furnishings. However, the Bible suggests that the Israelites’ wealth came from the Egyptians, residents of the richest nation in the world of that time, and was gained by obedience to God’s command (3:22; 12:35).
No individual Israelite would have had to obtain a large quality of good and silver from the Egyptians. Each of the more 600,000 adult males was asked to give only one-fifth of an ounce of silver to supply the amount needed for the tabernacle (v. 26). The gift of each of the adult male members of the community would have averaged less than one-seventeenth of an ounce of gold. Such limited quantities could have reasonably been obtained from ancient Egypt. 38: 25-26. The Biblical record indicates that Moses had two separate censuses taken of the adult Israelite males during the first 14 months after they left Egypt. The first of these, mentioned here, was carried out prior to the beginning of the second year after the exodus from Egypt (40:2) for the purpose of collecting contributions for the tabernacle construction. The second, conducted during the second month of the second year after the exodus, and described in Numbers 1; 1-16, was a military census intended to help the Israelites prepare for their planned invasion of Canaan.”
Soli Deo Gloria!