Catholic Commentary
The Call for Skilled Craftsmen and an Inventory of Works (Part 2)
18the pins of the tabernacle, the pins of the court, and their cords;19the finely worked garments for ministering in the holy place—the holy garments for Aaron the priest, and the garments of his sons—to minister in the priest’s office.’”
Exodus 35:18–19 lists the final materials needed for the Tabernacle: the bronze tent pegs and cords for structural support, and the finely crafted priestly garments for Aaron and his sons. Moses emphasizes that both hidden, load-bearing components and visible ceremonial vestments are equally essential to the sacred sanctuary's construction and function.
In God's order, a buried tent peg and a high priest's robe are equally necessary—nothing in worship is small enough to be worthless.
Catholic tradition brings a distinctive richness to both images in these verses. On the priestly vestments, the Catechism teaches that the ordained priesthood of the New Covenant participates in a unique way in the one priesthood of Christ (CCC §1546–1547). The garments of Aaron and his sons are therefore not merely historical curiosities; they are sacramental anticipations. Pope John Paul II, in Dominicae Cenae (1980), wrote that the liturgical vestments of ordained ministers are a visible sign of the priest's act of "putting on Christ" (cf. Gal 3:27) — an insight that reaches back through the Fathers directly to this inventory in Exodus.
St. Thomas Aquinas in the Summa Theologiae (I-II, q. 102, a. 5) treats the priestly vestments as part of the ceremonial precepts of the Old Law and argues that each article of Aaron's dress signified a virtue required for holy ministry: the linen tunic signifying cleanness of conscience, the belt signifying readiness for service, the miter signifying governance of the mind. This allegorical-moral reading, deeply embedded in the Catholic interpretive tradition, shows that even the fabric of priestly clothing is a catechesis on the interior life required for worship.
Regarding the tent pegs and cords, the Catechism's teaching on the universal call to holiness (CCC §941; cf. Lumen Gentium §39–42) is illuminated here. The Second Vatican Council insisted that hidden, unglamorous service within the Body of Christ — especially lay service — is no less holy than the visible and the exalted. The bronze tent peg, listed in the same breath as the Ark, is a theological argument in hardware.
For the contemporary Catholic, these two verses together offer a correction to two temptations that pull in opposite directions. The first is the temptation to spiritualize worship to the point of disdaining the material — to think that the physical details of the liturgy, the quality of vestments, the care taken with sacred objects, are unimportant beside the "real" interior act of faith. Exodus 35:19 rebukes this: God commanded "finely worked" garments, not functional minimalism, because beauty in worship is not vanity but catechesis. Parishes and individuals can ask honestly: do we bring the same care to the preparation of the sacred space and the quality of liturgical objects that Moses brought to the Tabernacle? The second temptation is to measure one's contribution to the Church only by its visibility. Verse 18 — the tent pegs — calls every Catholic whose work is hidden, unglamorous, and unappreciated: the volunteer who cleans the sacristy, the parent who catechizes quietly at the kitchen table, the sick person offering suffering in union with Christ. You are named in the inventory. The sanctuary cannot stand without you.
Commentary
Exodus 35:18 — "The pins of the tabernacle, the pins of the court, and their cords"
The Hebrew word for "pins" (יְתֵדֹת, yetedot) refers to the bronze tent pegs driven into the ground to hold the curtains and hangings of both the Tabernacle structure and its surrounding courtyard enclosure (cf. Ex 27:19; 38:20). Their corresponding cords (מֵיתָרִים, meitarim) were the linen or twisted-fiber ropes that ran from the structural poles and frames down to these pegs, giving the entire sanctuary its tautness, stability, and shape. These are the most prosaic objects in the entire inventory — invisible from a worshipper's vantage point, buried in the earth, doing their work in hiddenness. Yet Moses names them alongside the Ark of the Covenant in this same call for donations and skilled labor (cf. Ex 35:10–17). The detail is intentional: the Tabernacle could not stand without them. A structure that sheltered the very presence of God required these anonymous anchors. The fact that they are specifically listed among the works to be crafted (v. 10) indicates that even their manufacture was an act of sacred service — there was no secular craft within the Tabernacle economy.
Exodus 35:19 — "The finely worked garments for ministering in the holy place — the holy garments for Aaron the priest, and the garments of his sons"
The phrase "finely worked garments" (בִּגְדֵי הַשְּׂרָד, bigdey ha-serad) denotes garments of a particular, carefully woven quality, set apart for liturgical use. The term serad is used exclusively in priestly-vestment contexts in Exodus and Numbers, underscoring a vocabulary of sacred distinction. The full description of Aaron's vestments — the ephod, breastpiece, robe, tunic, turban, and sash — was given earlier in Exodus 28, and what verse 19 accomplishes here is to re-anchor those elaborate descriptions within Moses' practical call to action: these garments must now actually be made. Two tiers of vestments are distinguished: "the holy garments for Aaron the priest" (the high-priestly regalia, the most elaborate) and "the garments of his sons" (the simpler tunics and sashes of the ordinary priests, Ex 28:40–43). Both tiers are necessary; the hierarchical distinction within the priesthood is itself part of the divinely ordered liturgy.
Typological and Spiritual Senses
The pins and cords, read typologically, speak to what is hidden yet load-bearing in the life of the Church: the silent prayer of cloistered religious, the unrecognized labor of sacristans, the behind-the-scenes service of those who prepare the altar. These are the "tent pegs" of the new sanctuary. St. Paul's teaching that "those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable" (1 Cor 12:22) finds its Old Testament image right here. The priestly vestments, meanwhile, are among the richest types in the entire Pentateuch. The Church Fathers — especially Origen () and Cyril of Alexandria — read the high priest clothed in glory as a figure of Christ, the eternal High Priest (Heb 4:14), who clothes Himself in our humanity as in a vestment to enter the sanctuary of the Father's presence on our behalf. The layered garments of Aaron and his sons also prefigure the hierarchical structure of the ordained priesthood — bishop, priest, deacon — each with their proper vesture and office in the new covenant liturgy.