The 7 Pieces of Furniture of the Tabernacle

God gave the specific order for the arrangement of the furniture (Exodus 40:20-38). If you could trace a line around their divine order the following would appear (the ark and mercy seat are two pieces forming one).

mishkanfurnishings The 7 Pieces of Furniture of the Tabernacle.jpg

The tabernacle and its rituals are called a “shadow of good things to come”; the salvation of Jesus Christ – of which He is the substance (Hebrews 9:9-11, 10:1, Colossians 2:17). Many still focus on religious rituals rather than receiving the reality – the Lord Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. They are chasing shadows. They are like a husband who sees the shadow of his bride appearing as she is ready to walk down the aisle. He then ignores his bride and embraces her shadow. Are you chasing shadows or have you embraced the only living Savior?

1. The Altar of Sacrifice

The first piece a worshipper would encounter as he came through the door was the altar. It was wood covered with brass (or copper at that time). It was a perfect square with horns on each of the 4 corners. It was where the blood sacrifices of clean lambs and goats would be offered in the heat of fire unto God for atonement (the covering and forgiveness of sins) (Exodus 27:1-8, Leviticus 17:11).

Since the brazen altar was FIRST, it tells us that judgment on sin and forgiveness must come first in one’s approach to God.

If the courtyard had been set up with no altar or priest to offer the sacrifice, it would convey that one could come into God’s presence without a sacrifice or mediator. Some religions teach this way. But the altar says our sin must be dealt with first by God’s ordained Priest.

It was the Son of God who on the cross sacrificed His sinless blood on behalf of the sinner; ” Christ died for our sins.” Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world (1Corinthians 15:3, John 1:29). It was Jesus who was resurrected as the High Priest. When people receive the Lord Jesus Christ by faith, they are taking their place as a sinner under judgment and trusting Christ alone as their Savior before God.

The equal four sides of the altar remind us that the gospel of Christ is nondiscriminatory. For God so loved the world (north, south, east and west) what He gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). The four horns speak of power. The blood of Jesus Christ has the power to forgive all sin (1John 1:7, 9).

2. The Laver of Washing

The second piece of furniture was a washing basin for the priests called the laver (lavatory – place of washing). It came after the altar of sacrifice and before the entrance to the sanctuary. It was made of polished copper. Its purpose was “to wash”. The priests had to daily wash their hands and feet from dirt and contamination before they worshipped God at the altar or entered the sanctuary to serve. The laver was not for the shedding of sacrificial blood for sin but for the washing of dirt. One had to be clean to serve. (Exodus 30:18-21).

This second piece tells us that God is not only interested in the forgiveness of our sin but also our daily cleanliness in living for Him.

The New Testament teaches that once one is forgiven of sin by Christ’s sacrifice he or she receives the “living water” of the Holy Spirit. One purpose of the Spirit is to renew our minds to serve God acceptably. We also read of “the washing of water by the word.” As the Christian daily learns God’s Word, the Bible, he or she is cleansed from wrong thinking and ways so his service is acceptable to God. (John 8:37-39, Romans 12: 102, Hebrews 12:28, Ephesians 5:26, Psalm 119:11).

If the order was the laver first and the altar second the picture would convey that Christ’s gospel says to live clean and then God will forgive and make one right. Many religions proclaim this order. But God’s order reveals that first God forgives by Christ and then He gives the power (Spirit) for one to live clean unto Him.

The Holy Place

(The First Sanctuary with 3 Pieces of Furniture)

The holy place contained gold not copper: the golden lampstand, the golden table of bread and the golden altar of incense. Here the washed priests entered to perform service and representative worship unto the Lord. This section tells that God is not only interested in our forgiveness and daily cleanliness but also our worship.

3. The Golden Lampstand

On the south side of the holy place stood the pure golden lampstand. The gold was formed into the shape of an almond tree in the full bloom of life by beating or hammering. It had six fruitful branches with a central shaft or trunk. They were designed to hold seven bowls filled with olive oil to provide light. Light and life merged together in one unit. The light was continual and was never to go out.

There was no light at all in the holy place except that which came from the golden lampstand. The varied colors and beauty of the inner sanctuary could only be seen in this one light.

John 1 presents the one Christ (Jesus) as both light and life. “In Him was life; and the life was the light of men.” He alone as God in the flesh gives life eternal and the light to understand and know God. The number six of the branches reminds us of man (created on the sixth day). The number seven of the lamps reminds us of God’s perfect number (resting on the seventh day for all things were completed and good). Jesus Christ is both six (man) and seven (God) in one person.

The church of the Lord Jesus Christ is also pictured as a lampstand through which his Spirit and Word reveals the gospel truth and glory of God (Revelation 1:20).

4. The Golden Table of Showbread

Directly opposite the lampstand stood the table of showbread on the north side. One could only see the bread by the one light. Twelve loaves of bread were set on it once a week. During the week the bread was to be displayed before God. On the Sabbath the priests were to eat it. Thus God and man shared the same table together in fellowship of the same bread.

A table is a place where friends fellowship while eating. We read of the “Lord’s table” in the New Testament where the Christian breaks the bread and eats it in the fellowship of the body of Christ (1Corinthians 10:16-21). Here God and man are in harmony over the same thing: the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. His death was pleasing to the Father as an acceptable offering for our sin and His death is precious to us as the means by which we are forgiven and know God’s love (Romans 5:8).

5. The Golden Altar of Incense

The third and last piece of furniture in the holy place was the altar of incense with its four horns. This stood by the veil, which separated the holy place from the holiest of holies. This altar was for one purpose only: to burn incense, not sacrifice. The incense was a special God-prescribed formula, which sent out a rich fragrant smoke when the priest lit it at morning and evening.

Incense pictures prayers to God (Psalm 141:2, Revelation 5:8, 8:3). When one prays in the name of God’s priest (the Lord Jesus) there is power and it is a pleasing aroma to God.

The Holiest of Holies

(The Second Sanctuary with 2 Pieces of Furniture)

The holiest place of all contained the Ark of the Covenant covered with a special lid called the mercy seat. This was where God’s presence resided and where He communed (talked) with Moses (Exodus 25:22). The veil or curtain blocked the way so others could not enter in. However, the minute the Lord Jesus died on the cross the veil, then in the temple, was split in two showing the way was now made for all to come into the communion with God (Matthew 27:51, Hebrews 9:7-8, 10:19-21).

6&7 The Golden Ark and Mercy Seat

The Ark was a chest made out of wood covered with gold and sporting a crown border like the table and incense altar. It, however, rested in the holiest place where the presence of God dwelt. The chest contained the two tablets of the Ten Commandments: God’s standard of righteousness – a golden pot of manna: Gods provision to sustain His people in life – and Aaron’s rod that budded with life: God’s choice as High Priest to be our continual mediator and intercessor (Psalm 40:6-10, John 6:51, Hebrews 4:14).

The Mercy Seat was the cover of the ark. It was solid gold beaten into winged cherubim; one at each end looking down where God’s presence was. Cherubim are involved with the protection of God’s holiness. Here, once a year, the high priest alone went in with sacrificial blood from the brazen altar to sprinkle it on the mercy seat to obtain forgiveness of sins for Israel.

The mercy seat tells us that there is mercy with God. The sacrifice of Christ is God’s mercy seat (Romans 3:25). “Neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by His own blood He [the Lord Jesus] entered in once into the holy place [heaven], having obtained eternal redemption for us [all believers]” (Hebrews 9:12).

Follow the tabernacle signs and they will lead you to His Son, Jesus Christ the Lord

Reuven Rubin - Israeli painter

Reuven Rubin Israel Art Judaica.jpg

Reuven Rubin (Hebrew: ראובן רובין‎; November 13, 1893 – October 13, 1974) was a Romanian-born Israeli painter and Israel's first ambassador to Romania. 

Rubin Zelicovici (later Reuven Rubin)[2] was born in Galaţi to a poor Romanian Jewish Hasidic family. He was the eighth of 13 children.[1] In 1912, he left for Ottoman-ruled Palestine to study art at Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem. Finding himself at odds with the artistic views of the Academy's teachers, he left for Paris, France,[3] in 1913 to pursue his studies at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts. At the outbreak of World War I, he was returned to Romania, where he spent the war years.

In 1921, he traveled to the United States with his friend and fellow artist, Arthur Kolnik, with whom he had shared a studio in Cernăuţi. In New York City, the two met artist Alfred Stieglitz, who was instrumental in organizing their first American show at the Anderson Gallery.[4] Following the exhibition, in 1922, they both returned to Europe. In 1923, Rubin emigrated to Mandate Palestine.

Rubin met his wife, Esther, in 1928, aboard a passenger ship to Palestine on his return from a show in New York City. She was a Bronx girl who had won a trip to Palestine in a Young Judea competition.[1] 

The history of Israeli art began at a very specific moment in the history of international art, at a time of Cezannian rebellion against the conventions of the past, a time typified by rapid stylistic changes.[5] Thus Jewish national art had no fixed history, no canon to obey. Rubin began his career at a fortunate time.

The painters who depicted the country’s landscapes in the 1920s rebelled against Bezalel. They sought current styles in Europe that would help portray their own country’s landscape, in keeping with the spirit of the time. Rubin’s Cezannesque landscapes from the 1920s[6] were defined by both a modern and a naive style, portraying the landscape and inhabitants of Israel in a sensitive fashion. His landscape paintings in particular paid special detail to a spiritual, translucent light.

In Palestine, he became one of the founders of the new Eretz-Yisrael style. Recurring themes in his work were the biblical landscape, folklore and people, including Yemenite, Hasidic Jews and Arabs. Many of his paintings are sun-bathed depictions of Jerusalem and the Galilee. Rubin might have been influenced by the work of Henri Rousseau whose style combined with Eastern nuances, as well as with the neo-Byzantine art to which Rubin had been exposed in his native Romania. In accordance with his integrative style, he signed his works with his first name in Hebrew and his surname in Roman letters.

In 1924, he was the first artist to hold a solo exhibition at the Tower of David, in Jerusalem (later exhibited in Tel Aviv at Gymnasia Herzliya). That year he was elected chairman of the Association of Painters and Sculptors of Palestine. From the 1930s onwards, Rubin designed backdrops for Habima Theater, the Ohel Theater and other theaters.

His autobiography, published in 1969, is titled My Life - My Art. He died in Tel Aviv in October 1974, after having bequeathed his home on 14 Bialik Street and a core collection of his paintings to the city of Tel Aviv. The Rubin Museum opened in 1983. The director and curator of the museum is his daughter-in-law, Carmela Rubin.[1] Rubin's paintings are now increasingly sought after. At a Sotheby's auction in New York City in 2007, his work accounted for six of the ten top lots.[1]

1.8 Million Free Works of Art from World-Class Museums: A Meta List of Great Art Available Online

Monalisa by Leonardo da Vinci portrait.jpg

Since the first stirrings of the internet, artists and curators have puzzled over what the fluidity of online space would do to the experience of viewing works of art. At a conference on the subject in 2001, Susan Hazan of the Israel Museum wonderedwhether there is “space for enchantment in a technological world?” She referred to Walter Benjamin’s ruminations on the “potentially liberating phenomenon” of technologically reproduced art, yet also noted that “what was forfeited in this process were the ‘aura’ and the authority of the object containing within it the values of cultural heritage and tradition.” Evaluating a number of online galleries of the time, Hazan found that “the speed with which we are able to access remote museums and pull them up side by side on the screen is alarmingly immediate.” Perhaps the “accelerated mobility” of the internet, she worried, “causes objects to become disposable and to decline in significance.”

Fifteen years after her essay, the number of museums that have made their collections available online whole, or in part, has grown exponentially and shows no signs of slowing. We may not need to fear losing museums and libraries—important spaces that Michel Foucault called “heterotopias,” where linear, mundane time is interrupted. These spaces will likely always exist. Yet increasingly we need never visit them in person to view most of their contents. Students and academics can conduct nearly all of their research through the internet, never having to travel to the Bodleian, the Beinecke, or the British Library. And lovers of art must no longer shell out for plane tickets and hotels to see the precious contents of the Getty, the Guggenheim, or the Rijksmuseum. For all that may be lost, online galleries have long been “making works of art widely available, introducing new forms of perception in film and photography and allowing art to move from private to public, from the elite to the masses.”

Even more so than when Hazan wrote those words, the online world offers possibilities for “the emergence of new cultural phenomena, the virtual aura.” Over the years we have featured dozens of databases, archives, and online galleries through which you might virtually experience art the world over, an experience once solely reserved for only the very wealthy. And as artists and curators adapt to a digital environment, they find new ways to make virtual galleries enchanting. The vast collections in the virtual galleries listed below await your visit, with close to 2,000,000 paintings, sculptures, photographs, books, and more. See the Rosetta Stone at the British Museum (top), courtesy of the Google Cultural Institute. See Van Gogh's many self-portraits and vivid, swirling landscapes at The Van Gogh Museum. Visit the Asian art collection at the Smithsonian's Freer and Sackler Galleries. Or see Vassily Kandinsky's dazzling abstract compositions at the Guggenheim.

And below the list of galleries, find links to online collections of several hundred art books to read online or download. Continue to watch this space: We'll add to both of these lists as more and more collections come online.

Art Images from Museums & Libraries

Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC.

 

The painting ‘Salvator Mundi’ by Leonardo da Vinci at Christie’s

The painting ‘Salvator Mundi’ by Leonardo da Vinci at Christie’s.jpg

After 19 minutes of dueling, with four bidders on the telephone and one in the room, Leonardo da Vinci’s “Salvator Mundi” sold on Wednesday night for $450.3 million with fees, shattering the high for any work of art sold at auction. It far surpassed Picasso’s “Women of Algiers,” which fetched $179.4 million at Christie’s in May 2015. The buyer was not immediately disclosed.

There were gasps throughout the sale, as the bids climbed by tens of millions up to $225 million, by fives up to $260 million, and then by twos. As the bidding slowed, and a buyer pondered the next multi-million-dollar increment, Jussi Pylkkanen, the auctioneer, said, “It’s an historic moment; we’ll wait.”

Toward the end, Alex Rotter, Christie’s co-chairman of postwar and contemporary art, who represented a buyer on the phone, made two big jumps to shake off one last rival bid from Francis de Poortere, Christie’s head of old master paintings.

The price is all the more remarkable at a time when the old masters market is contracting, because of limited supply and collectors’ penchant for contemporary art.

And to critics, the astronomical sale attests to something else — the degree to which salesmanship has come to drive and dominate the conversation about art and its value. Some art experts pointed to the painting’s damaged condition and its questionable authenticity.

“This was a thumping epic triumph of branding and desire over connoisseurship and reality,” said Todd Levin, a New York art adviser.

Christie’s marketing campaign was perhaps unprecedented in the art world; it was the first time the auction house went so far as to enlist an outside agency to advertise the work. Christie’s also released a videothat included top executives pitching the painting to Hong Kong clients as “the holy grail of our business” and likening it to “the discovery of a new planet.” Christie’s called the work “the Last da Vinci,” the only known painting by the Renaissance master still in a private collection (some 15 others are in museums).

“It’s been a brilliant marketing campaign,” said Alan Hobart, director of the Pyms Gallery in London, who has acquired museum-quality artworks across a range of historical periods for the British businessman and collector Graham Kirkham. “This is going to be the future.”

There was a palpable air of anticipation at Christie’s Rockefeller Center headquarters as the art market’s major players filed into the sales room. The capacity crowd included top dealers like Larry Gagosian, David Zwirner and Marc Payot of Hauser & Wirth. Major collectors had traveled here for the sale, among them Eli Broad and Michael Ovitz from Los Angeles; Martin Margulies from Miami; and Stefan Edlis from Chicago. Christie’s had produced special red paddles for those bidding on the Leonardo, and many of its specialists taking bids on the phone wore elegant black.

Earlier, 27,000 people had lined up at pre-auction viewings in Hong Kong, London, San Francisco and New York to glimpse the painting of Christ as “Savior of the World.” Members of the public — indeed, even many cognoscenti — cared little if at all whether the painting might have been executed in part by studio assistants; whether Leonardo had actually made the work himself; or how much of the canvas had been repainted and restored. They just wanted to see a masterwork that dates from about 1500 and was rediscovered in 2005.

“There is extraordinary consensus it is by Leonardo,” said Nicholas Hall, the former co-chairman of old master paintings at Christie’s, who now runs his own Manhattan gallery. “This is the most important old master painting to have been sold at auction in my lifetime.”

That is the kind of name-brand appeal that Christie’s was presumably banking on by placing the painting in its high-profile contemporary art sale, rather than in its less sexy annual old master auction, where it technically belongs. To some extent, the auction house succeeded with the painting even before the sale, having secured a guaranteed $100 million bid from an unidentified third party. It is the 12th artwork to break the $100 million mark at auction, and a new high for any old master at auction, surpassing Rubens’s “Massacre of the Innocents,” which sold for $76.7 million in 2002 (or more than $105 million, adjusted for inflation).

But many art experts argue that Christie’s used marketing window dressing to mask the baggage that comes with the Leonardo, from its compromised condition to its complicated buying history and said that the auction house put the artwork in a contemporary sale to circumvent the scrutiny of old masters experts, many of whom have questioned the painting’s authenticity and condition.

“The composition doesn’t come from Leonardo,” said Jacques Franck, a Paris-based art historian and Leonardo specialist. “He preferred twisted movement. It’s a good studio work with a little Leonardo at best, and it’s very damaged.”

“It’s been called ‘the male Mona Lisa,’” he said, “but it doesn’t look like it at all.” Mr. Franck said he has examined the Mona Lisa out of its frame five times.

Luke Syson, curator of the 2011 National Gallery exhibition in London that featured the painting, said in his catalog essay that “the picture has suffered.” While both hands are well preserved, he said, the painting was “aggressively over cleaned,” resulting in abrasion of the whole surface, “especially in the face and hair of Christ.”

Christie’s maintains that it was upfront about the much-restored, damaged condition of the oil-on-panel, which shows Christ with his right hand raised in blessing and his left holding a crystal orb.

But Christie’s was also slow to release an official condition report and its authenticity warranty on the Leonardo runs out in five years, as it does on all lots bought at its auctions, according to the small print in the back of its sale catalog.

The auction house has also played down the painting’s volatile sales history.

The artwork has been the subject of legal disputes and amassed a price history that ranges from less than $10,000 in 2005, when it was spotted at an estate auction, to $200 million when it was first offered for sale by a consortium of three dealers in 2012. But no institution besides the Dallas Museum of Art, which in 2012 made an undisclosed offer on the painting, showed public interest in buying it. Finally, in 2013, Sotheby’s sold it privately for $80 million to Yves Bouvier, a Swiss art dealer and businessman. Soon afterward, he sold it for $127.5 million, to the family trust of the Russian billionaire collector Dmitry E. Rybolovlev. Mr. Rybolovlev’s family trust was the seller on Wednesday night.

There was speculation that Liu Yiqian, a Chinese billionaire and co-founder with his wife of the Long Museum in Shanghai, may have been among the bidders. In recent years, the former taxi-driver-turned-power collector has become known for his splashy, record-breaking art purchases, including an Amedeo Modigliani nude painting for $170.4 million at a Christie’s auction in 2015. But in a message sent to a reporter via WeChat, a Chinese messaging app, Mr. Liu said he was not among the bidders for the Leonardo.

On Thursday morning, soon after the final sale was announced, Mr. Liu posted a message on his WeChat social media feed. “Da Vinci’s Savior sold for 400 million USD, congratulations to the buyer,” he wrote. “Feeling kind of defeated right now.”

By ROBIN POGREBIN and SCOTT REYBURN