The Israelite Tabernacle

 I really enjoyed listening to my podcasts about the Israelite Tabernacle this week.  All of them walked through what the tabernacle was like and the basics of the Levites' and Aaron's clothing and duties.  My favorite was probably Follow Him by Hank Smith and John Bytheway, special guest, Matthew Grey.  Matthew Grey looked at the worship in the Tabernacle from both a ancient and modern perspective that I appreciated. I won't restate all the things they talked about, but I did want to mention a few things that stood out to me.

First, I was impressed about how almost everything in the ancient Tabernacle and the ceremonies done there pointed to either Jesus, God, or the Plan of Salvation.  The symbolism is so rich and meaningful!  The high priest represents Jesus because he is the advocate for the people with God.  The sacrificial animals represent Jesus because they are sacrificed to take away the sins of the people. The structure of the Tabernacle represents the journey of fallen man back into the presence of God, from a Telestial state in the outer courtyard, to the Terrestrial state inside the tabernacle tent, and the Celestial state in the Holy of Holies. The colors of cloth, the materials the implements are made of,  all the objects and their orientations,  the sacred clothing, all have symbolic meaning.  It made me think that I need to look more closely at modern LDS temple worship for an eye to symbols. During this weeks study, I gained a greater understanding of the LDS temple worship and its symbolism.

Second, after reading Leviticus 1, I was thinking, wow, why did ancient worship involve the shedding of so much blood?  Every day animals were slaughtered and blood must have been everywhere.  I can imagine the smells and the muck. Why did so many animals have to die?  And then I got it. When Jesus came, the Jews were expecting a Messiah that would free them from captivity from Rome, not die for their sins. In Matthew 16: 21-23 when Jesus started telling his disciples that he would have to die, Peter rebuked him.  Even after Jesus died, his disciples were distraught and thought he was just gone. The hardest thing for them to understand was that for Jesus to fulfill his mission, he had to die.  Jesus must have just shook his head.  He gave them a form of worship that they had been performing for centuries, that basically said, if you want to be cleansed from sin, something is going to have to bleed and die. They had seen things die, and die, and die, and die, and then when it was time for the great sacrifice that all the other sacrifices had been foreshadowing, the disciples said, "What, you have to die?" Head palm. 

Finally, I always look for a little bit of the divine feminine when I read the scriptures.  I was delighted to find a little in the block of reading this week.  As I mentioned before, the High Priest at times represents the Lord, because he helps the people be cleansed from sin.  He also represents all the house of Israel when he comes into the Holy of Holies and asks for forgiveness for the people, and is ritually admitted back into the presence of God. I was interested in the special clothing of the High Priest.  He has the white garments that all the Levites wear, but on top of that he has a breastplate with twelve stones that represent the tribes of Israel. The breastplate is part of his role of representing his people before the Lord.  He also has a crown that says "Holiness to the Lord" which symbolizes his role as representing the Lord to the people.  The thing that caught my attention were the symbols on the fringe of his robe.  All around the bottom hem he has little bells and pomegranates.  These are both very feminine symbols.  The bells, primarily because they are concave, but more so the pomegranates.  They are a powerful symbol of feminine fertility.  They are like a womb because they are full of seeds and red juice that looks like blood.  On the outside they very much look like a woman's breast. So here is the High Priest, the alpha male of religious worship in ancient Israel, and he is wearing a very feminine symbol.  Does that mean that in representing the people of Israel to the Lord, he is representing the men and the women, or does it mean that as representing the Lord to the people, the Lord has a feminine element?  I kind of think both apply. I also think that when the woman of the issue of blood touched Jesus, the author specifically mentioned that she touched the hem of his robe.  The hem was the feminine part.