No Sealife Spared

July 26, 2009, 10:15 am by dc-agape.

Exodus 26

This entire chapter is devoted to the Tabernacle or tent that the worship of YHWH occurred in.  Using the NIV study Bible’s notes this “tent” was 150ft (27.7m) long by 75ft wide (13.8m).  It was also 4 cubit high (the study Bible does not convert this) but that relates to 70 inches (1.1m).  To relate that to something in modern size, my apartment is 96 inches (14.8m) tall.  I am nearly 70 inches tall (actually 1.05m), so even I would feel cramped in this tent.  Again, we see that the Israel people were much shorter than modern humans. 

Two sets of “curtains” were to be made.  One of goat hair curtains was to act as the outside tent covering and a second one, made of expensive dark blue/violet yarn to cover just the Most Holy Place (where the Ark was).  BTW, this color yarn was the most expensive made in that era.  To produce even 1.5 grams of the dye required to make the inner curtain it required 12,000 shellfish from the genius Murex.  Now this is YHWH using his own creation to glorify himself!  You realize that the inner curtain was 410 ft (75.8m) long by 70in (1.1m) for an area of 265 sq yards (83.4m²).  ½ oz per pound of cloth is recommended to create a dyed cloth.  Using an average of 13 ends per inch and this would be 410×13 = 5330 strands of purple dyed yarn to make the inner tent with a length of 70 in each.  This would then be 373,000 linear inches of yarn.  Using the fact that every 560 yard is 1 pound this would be about 10,000 lbs of cloth.  This would be about 4.5 million grams of yarn that needed to be dyed.  The number of shellfish required to dye this much yarn would then be 54 billion shell fish.  YHWH is holding back no expense! 

The roof was made of sea cow hides and had to cover the entire area: 11,250 sq ft (372.6m²).  Can you guess how many sea cows had to be slaughtered to get that much hide?  Each sea cow could possible 9 ft long and have a circumference of 6 ft for a total are of less than 45 ft.  As a result, YHWH required the hides of at least 250 of these animals.  I won’t even bother with the goat hair yarn required to make the outer tent.  Suffice it to say that at least in this case the yarn could be gathered off a living animal by sheering. 

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