Once More with Furniture

Exodus 30-31:  http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Exodus%2030:1-31:18&version=NIV1984

            Among other things, these two chapters bring us the remainder of the tabernacle’s furnishings—the altar of incense and the basin.

            The basin actually sat outside of the tabernacle proper.  That is, it was in the ‘courtyard’ around the tabernacle, meaning the tent itself.  It served a very obvious function, namely, cleaning up.  Many of the offerings brought to the Lord in the tabernacle involved blood sacrifice, and the basin provided a source of water for literally washing.  That washing also had a sort of extended meaning, too, as Exodus 30:19-21 indicate.  The priests were to ceremonially wash their hands and feet before doing the Lord’s work.  Peter alludes to this in his first letter:

. . . and this water symbolizes baptism that now saves you also—not the removal of dirt from the body but the pledge of a good conscience toward God. It saves you by the resurrection of Jesus Christ (1 Peter 3:21).

Now, I always feel compelled to point out that Peter says the water of the Flood is a symbol (actually he calls it an anti-type, a counterpart, a foreshadowing) for Baptism.  He does not say Baptism is a symbolic act.  Baptism, according to Peter does something: it saves.  Whatever.  We’ll deal with that in when we read the New Testament.  My point is that the basin in the tabernacle’s courtyard serves a deeper function.  The washing of hands and feet in some way prepares the priest to be in the presence of the Holy One of Israel.  There’s a baptismal overtone to it.  (Of course, in the New Testament every Christian is baptized and every Christian is equally a priest who enters the presence of God.)  Finally, we may hear some echoes of Jesus’ claim to be the water of life here, too (John 4), although the stretch there is that the water of the basin is not for drinking, but for washing.

            The other piece of furniture described today is the altar of incense.  Relatively small (18 inches square and 36 inches high), it was designed to have incense burned on it twice a day.  Now, I used incense in worship in college a few times.  You don’t need a very big fire or much incense to produce a very large cloud of smoke.  So the dimensions are adequate for the job.  Incense had a very practical function.  Consider that many sacrifices included the spattering of blood, and you can imagine that the tabernacle smelled bad.  The incense would have masked some of that.  However, the bigger significance of the incense is the much more common assertion that the Bible makes about it, namely, that it represents the prayers of God’s people ascending before Him (Ps 141, various places in Revelation).  In terms of a Jesus connection, there’s that, too, since the New Testament teaches that Jesus’ constantly intercedes for us  before the Father’s throne (Rom. 8:34; Heb. 7:25).