word tabernacle should not be used for this Hebrew word sukkah, it will be

wise to remember that it is not the usual word of the Old Testament for the

tabernacle in the wilderness.  The only passage that uses this word is Psalm

'In Salem also is His tabernacle (sok), and His dwelling place in

One word which is used for the Tabernacle is the Hebrew ohel.  This

word ohel occurs in the Old Testament  about 320 times, and is translated

covering 1, dwelling 1, dwelling place 2, home 1, and tabernacle about 110,

and tent about 100 times.  Ahal the verbal form of this word means 'to move

one's tent, used of wandering nomads, sometimes pitching their tents (Gen.

13:12), sometimes removing them' (Gen. 13:18) (Gesenius).  When ohel is

distinguished from mishkan as it is in Exodus 26:1,7 and 36:8,14,19, ohel

refers to the outer covering of the tent, the eleven curtains of goat's hair,

placed above the actual Tabernacle itself, i.e. the ten interior curtains

which rested on the boards.  When Israel were in the wilderness, the land of

Egypt behind them, the land of promise before them, and they themselves tent

dwellers moving on as the pillar of cloud or fire should indicate, God gave

instruction to Moses as to the sort of house to be erected as His dwelling

place 'and let them make Me a sanctuary; that I may dwell among them' (Exod.

25:8) and this sanctuary and dwelling of the Most High was a Movable Tent.

In other words, until the Redemptive purpose of God is attained, the

Scriptures represent God Himself as sharing this pilgrim character with His

people.  This rather strange statement we hope to justify as we proceed.  We

ask the reader, however, to keep in mind that the 'pattern' shown to Moses in

the mount, which the Epistle to the Hebrews tells us was associated with

'Heaven itself', reveals that this heaven is likened to a tent, and is to be

'dissolved' or taken down when 'the end' is reached.  This is the heaven of

Genesis 1:6, not the heaven of verse 1.

We turn, however, to the second important Hebrew word which is

translated 'tabernacle', namely the Hebrew word mishkan, which must be

studied together with the verb shaken, familiar in another form to the

English reader in the term 'the Shekinah glory'.  Shaken means 'to dwell' and

especially 'to dwell in a tent' (Gen. 9:27; Psa. 120:5).  'Dwelling' in the

land of promise, is comparable to 'sojourning' and contrasted with living in

Egypt (Gen. 26:1-3).  Jacob looked upon his whole life as a 'pilgrimage' or

'sojourning' (Gen. 47:7-9).  When the Most High divided the land as an

inheritance for Israel, Psalm 78:55 says that He 'made the tribes of Israel

to dwell in tents', instead, as we might have supposed, to start building

cities.  We go back to the garden of Eden, however, for the first occurrence

of shaken and read in Genesis 3:24:

'So He drove out the man; and caused to dwell as in a tabernacle (lit.)

at the east end of the garden of Eden, cherubim'.

Cain and Abel knew where to bring their offering, and we learn from Exodus

33:7-9 that there was a tabernacle which Moses called 'the tent of meeting'

that cannot be the tabernacle of Exodus 25, for the tables of stone were not

prepared at the time (Exod. 34:1).  Again, Exodus 16:33,34 suggests that

there was at that time some recognized place where the omer of manna could be

laid up before the Lord.  As Parkhurst's Hebrew Lexicon says of Genesis 3:24:

'So the word shaken here expresses that there was a tabernacle

(resembling doubtless the Mosaic) in which the cherubim and emblematic