Seder 65: Exodus 26-27---Three Tabernacle Curtains

Israel's tabernacle in the wilderness included three dividing curtains that marked off different "zones" of sacred space:

• One curtain separated the Holy Place from the Most Holy Place inside the tabernacle (Ex 26:31-35).
• There was a second curtain at the entrance to the tent, dividing the courtyard from the Holy Place (Ex 26:36-37).
• There was a third curtain at the entrance of the courtyard, dividing the courtyard from the rest of the world (Ex 27:16).

Israelites who were ritually clean could enter the courtyard and offer sacrfices.  Priests could cross the second curtain and enter the tabernacle.  Only the high priest could cross the inner curtain and enter the Most Holy Place, and he could only do this once a year on the Day of Atonement (Lev 16).

The structure here mirrors what was going on at Mount Sinai while Moses was conferring with God at the top of the mountain.  Sacrifices were offered at an altar at the foot of the mountain (Ex 24:4-5).  Moses and Aaron, Nadab, Abihu and seventy elders went part way up the mountain to have a covenant meal in the presence of God (vv 9-11).  Then Moses alone went further up the mountain to receive revelation from God (vv 12-18).      

The tabernacle has often been described as a "portable Sinai," through which God would continue to be present among his people and provide continuing revelation to them.  

The various curtains were "embroidered with needlework" (Ex 26:36).  In a sermonette at Church of the Messiah on  July 24, 2021, Jack Starcher focused on the Hebrew word here, raqam, which connotes something being skillfully woven together.  In the section of Exodus detailing the tabernacle and its construction, this word is used seven more times---Ex 27:16; 28:39; 35:35; 36:37; 38:18,23; 39:29.

Jack explained that this word is used only one other time in the Hebrew Scriptures, in Psalm 139:15.  Here the psalmist prays, 

"My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth."

So the tabernacle curtains were woven together in the same way that God crafted the human body.  And as the tabernacle was designed for divine habitation, so were our bodies---see 1 Cor 3:16,17; 6:19.

There were curtains analogous to the tabernacle curtain in the first and second temples.  In a sermon on July 24, 2021, Kyle Kettering noted a teaching in the Talmud (b. Tamid 29b) that during the time of the second temple, two new inner curtains were made each year by a group of 82 maidens, and 300 priests immersed each of these for purification.  In those days, with the ark gone, there was nothing behind the curtain.  God's Shekinah had never come to the Second Temple.  

The Gospels record that at the time when Jesus died on the cross, the inner curtain ripped in two (Matt 27:51-54; Mark 15:38; Luke 23:45).  A wealth of meaning has been attached to this symbolic event.  Kyle reflected on the interpretation of the torn curtain as a time marker.  The Messianic era had come, and people from all nations can approach God through Jesus, our high priest in the heavenly tabernacle (Heb 10:19-22).