After reading chapter 31:
*Yahweh assigns Bezalel, Oholiab and other craftsmen to work on all the articles for the priests and tabernacle. Their ability to make these things was supposedly a gift from God, not because of their own personal hard work, talent, and skill.
*Next are instructions about observing the Sabbath. Anyone who desecrates it is to be executed. Any one who works on that day is to be cut off from the rest of the Israelites. Harsh. I wonder how many Jews have actually been executed or excommunicated for working on a Sabbath. I wonder how many secretly did what was considered work. The Sabbath is to take place every seventh day. This is another everlasting covenant.
*Then, Yahweh gives Moses the two tablets of the testimony, which he had inscribed using his finger. Here I notice that the text does not say exactly what is written on those tablets. Is it all the ordinances God has recently given Moses? It does not say they are the Ten Commandments. So far, we haven't even come across the phrase "Ten Commandments." We are also not told what the tablets are made of. God can write with his finger! How cool is that?!
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