Moses and the Tent of Meeting

Sources

ומשה AND MOSES, from the time of the sin and henceforth, יקח את האהל USED TO TAKE THE TENT — יקח expresses an action continually going on — he used to take his tent and pitch it without the camp. He said, “One who has been placed under an interdict by the Master must be placed under an interdict by His disciple also” (Since God had stated that He would not dwell amongst the people, Moses, the disciple, also felt compelled to remove from their midst) (Midrash Tanchuma, Ki Tisa 27). הרחק DISTANT [FROM THE CAMP] — two thousand cubits, just as it is stated…

Rashi on Exodus 33:7:1-6

NOW MOSES TOOK THE TENT AND WOULD PITCH IT WITHOUT THE CAMP. Rashi wrote: “This was practiced by Moses from the Day of Atonement until the Tabernacle was set up [five and a half months later — on the first day of Nisan], but not afterwards. For on the seventeenth day of Tammuz the Tablets of the Law were broken, on the eighteenth he burnt the calf and brought the sinners to judgment, and on the nineteenth he ascended the mountain and stayed there for forty days. On the first of Ellul it was said to him, and come up in the morning to receive the second Tablets…

Ramban on Exodus 33:7:1-2

THE TENT. His tent. It is like and they came into the tent (Ex. 18:7).

Ibn Ezra on Exodus 33:7:2

R. Judah then expounded the verse: “Now Moses took the tent and pitched it without the camp” (Ex. 23, 7). Why did he do so? Said Moses: Since Israel have denied the Holy One, blessed be He, and have exchanged His glory for another, let His pledge here be in the hands of a faithful keeper until we see with whom it will be left.

Zohar, Bechukotai 9:35

R. Judah said: ‘It is written: “And Moses used to take the tent and pitch it without the camp” (Ex. 33, 7). The reason of this was that Moses did not wish that the “holy side” should rest in the midst of the side of defilement.’ Said R. Eleazar: ‘So long as the “holy side” rules, the side of defilement is powerless and bows before it. So we have learnt that so long as Jerusalem is in its fulness wicked, Tyre remains devastated.’

Zohar, Pekudei 32:300

R. Abba argued that the simple name ‘tent, has the same implication as in the verse ‘a tent that shall not be removed, the stakes of which shall never be plucked up’ (Is. 33, 20), i.e. that it designates something which confers eternity on the world and saves it from death, whereas the epithet ‘meeting’ is used in the same sense as in the phrase ‘a house of meeting for all flesh’ (i.e. the grave, Job 30, 23), and indicates that now the life which it conferred was only for a limited period. At first it was unimpaired, but now it was impaired…

Zohar, Bereshit 89:297

But the tabernacle he took away from thence, and spread it without the camp, and removed it from the camp of the people to the distance of two thousand cubits; and it was called the Tabernacle of the House of Instruction: and it was that when any one turned by repentance with a true heart before the Lord, he went forth to the Tabernacle of the House of Instruction that was without the camp, to confess and pray for the pardon of his sins; and praying he was forgiven.

Targum Jonathan on Exodus 33:7

Relatedראו גם

Moses and the Priesthood

Tent of Meeting (Ohel Moed)

Parashat Pekudei

Moses and the Torah

Sheetsדפי מקורות

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