Bible Commentaries

Into this ark Moses was to put “the testimony” ( העדת ; cf. Exodus 40:20). This is the name given to the two tables of stone, upon which the ten words spoken by God to the whole nation were written, and which Moses was to receive from God (Exodus 24:12). Because these ten words were the declaration of God upon the basis of which the covenant was concluded (Exodus 34:27-28; Deuteronomy 4:13; Deuteronomy 10:1-2), these tables were called the tables of testimony (ch. Exodus 31:18; Exodus 34:29), or tables of the covenant (Deuteronomy 9:9; Deuteronomy 11:15).

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“Out of the capporeth shall ye make the cherubs at its two ends,” i.e., so as to form one whole with the capporeth itself, and be inseparable from it.

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Vessels of pure gold were also to be made, to stand upon the table (cf. Exodus 37:16). קערת , τὰ τευβλία (lxx), large deep plates, in which the shew-bread was not only brought to the table, but placed upon it. These plates cannot have been small, for the silver קערת , presented by Nahshon the tribe prince, weighed 130 shekels (Numbers 7:13). כּפּת , from כּף a hollow hand, small scoops, according to Numbers 7:14, only ten shekels in weight, used to put out the incense belonging to the shew-bread upon the table (cf. Leviticus 24:7 and Numbers 7:14): lxx θυΐ́σκη , i.e., according to the Etymol. Magn., σκάφη ἡ τὰ θύματα δεχομένη . There were also two vessels “to pour out,” sc., the drink-offering, or libation of wine: viz., קשׂות , σπονδεῖα (lxx), sacrificial spoons to make the libation of wine with, and מנקּיּת , κύαθοι (lxx), goblets into which the wine was poured, and in which it was placed upon the table. (See Exodus 37:16 and Numbers 4:7, where the goblets are mentioned before the sacrificial spoons.)

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Bread of the face ( פּנים לחם ), the mode of preparing and placing which is described in Leviticus 24:5., was to lie continually before ( לפני ) Jehovah. These loaves were called “bread of the face” (shew-bread), because they were to lie before the face of Jehovah as a meat-offering presented by the children of Israel (Leviticus 24:8), not as food for Jehovah, but as a symbol of the spiritual food which Israel was to prepare (John 6:27, cf. John 4:32, John 4:34), a figurative representation of the calling it had received from God; so that bread and wine, which stood upon the table by the side of the loaves, as the fruit of the labour bestowed by Israel upon the soil of its inheritance, were a symbol of its spiritual labour in the kingdom of God, the spiritual vineyard of its Lord.

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