Attributed commentary excerpt
Keil & Delitzsch on Exodus 38:21
A historical reference excerpt for this verse. Read it alongside the biblical text and other available sources.
Commentary on the Old Testament
C. F. Keil & F. Delitzsch · 19th-century historical commentary
Source: BibleWord.ai's local reference edition of this named work.
Estimate of the Amount of Metal Used. - Exo 38:21. "These are the numbered things of the dwelling, of the dwelling of the testimony, that were numbered at the command of Moses, through the service of the Levites, by the hand of Ithamar, the son of Aaron the priest." פּקוּדים does not mean the numbering (equivalent to מפקד Sa2 4:9, or פּקדּה Ch2 17:14; Ch2 26:11), as Knobel supposes, but here as elsewhere, even in Num 26:63-64, it signifies "the numbered;" the only difference being, that in most cases it refers to persons, here to things, and that the reckoning consisted not merely in the counting and entering of the different things, but in ascertaining their weight and estimating their worth. Lyra has given the following correct rendering of this heading: "haec est summa numeri ponderis eorum, quae facta sunt in tabernaculo ex auro, argento et aere." It was apparently superfluous to enumerate the different articles again, as this had been repeatedly done before. The weight of the different metals, therefore, is all that is given. The "dwelling" is still further described as "the dwelling of the testimony," because the testimony, i.e., the decalogue written with the finger of God upon the tables of stone, was kept in the dwelling, and this testimony formed the base of the throne of Jehovah, and was the material pledge that Jehovah would cause His name, His manifested presence, to dwell there, and would thus show Himself to His people in grace and righteousness. "That which was numbered" is an explanatory apposition to the previous clause, "the numbering of the dwelling;" and the words הלויּם עבדת, which follow, are an accusative construed freely to indicate more particularly the mode of numbering (Ewald, 204 a), viz., "through the service," or "by means of the service of the Levites," not for their service. "By the hand of Ithamar:" who presided over the calculations which the Levites carried out under his superintendence. Exo 38:22-23 The allusion to the service of the Levites under Ithamar leads the historian to mention once more the architects of the whole building, and the different works connected with it (cf. Exo 31:2.). Exo 38:24 "(As for) all the gold that was used (העשׂוּי) for the work in every kind of holy work, the gold of the wave-offering (the gold that was offered as a wave-offering, see at Exo 35:22) was (amounted to) 29 talents and 730 shekels in holy shekel," that is to say, 87,370 shekels or 877,300 thalers (L.131,595), if we accept Thenius' estimate, that the gold shekel was worth 10 thalers (L.1, 10s.), which is probably very near the truth. Exo 38:25-28 Of the silver, all that is mentioned is the amount of atonement-money raised from those who were numbered (see at Exo 30:12.) at the rate of half a shekel for every male, without including the freewill-offerings of silver ( Exo 35:24, cf. Exo 25:3), whether it was that they were too insignificant, or that they were not used for the work, but were placed with the excess mentioned in Exo 36:7. The result of the numbering gave 603,550 men, every one of whom paid half a shekel. This would yield 301,775 shekels, or 100 talents and 1775 shekels, which proves by the way that a talent contained 3000 shekels. A hundred talents of this were used for casting 96 sockets for the 48 boards, and 4 sockets for the 4 pillars of the inner court, - one talent therefore for each socket, - and the 1775 shekels for the hooks of the pillars that sustained the curtains, for silvering th…
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