Exodus 40:16–19

Exodus 40:16 — "Moses did so. According to all that Yahweh commanded him, so he did."

This verse is deceptively short but theologically enormous. The phrase "Moses did so" serves as a liturgical refrain that echoes across chapters 39–40 (appearing seven times in the broader section), mirroring the sevenfold divine "and it was so" of the creation account in Genesis 1. The parallelism is almost certainly intentional: just as God spoke and creation came into being, Moses speaks — or rather acts — and the sacred dwelling comes into being. The doubling of the formula ("Moses did so … so he did") is not mere redundancy but emphasis: total, unreserved, precise obedience. The Hebrew suggests complete conformity between the divine command and human action, leaving no gap for personal improvisation. For the Catholic reader, this verse establishes the principle that authentic worship cannot be self-invented; it must be received and faithfully enacted.

Exodus 40:17 — "In the first month in the second year, on the first day of the month, the tabernacle was raised up."

The date is liturgically electric. It is exactly one year after the first Passover (Exodus 12:2 designates this month as the "beginning of months"). The Tabernacle rising on the new year's first day signals a new creation, a new ordering of time around the presence of God. Rabbinic tradition (Seder Olam Rabbah) notes this is the first time the people could offer sacrifice in the manner God prescribed — the preceding year having been one of formation, failure (the golden calf), and restoration. The passive voice ("the tabernacle was raised up") subtly suggests that God himself is the ultimate agent of this dwelling's establishment.

Exodus 40:18 — "Moses raised up the tabernacle, and laid its sockets, and set up its boards, and put in its bars, and raised up its pillars."

The verse enumerates the structural elements with architectural precision: sockets (the silver bases cast from the census ransom money, Exodus 38:25–27), boards (the acacia planks overlaid with gold), bars (the horizontal poles locking the boards together), and pillars (the standing columns supporting the entrance screen). The sequence moves from foundation to wall to superstructure — a bottom-up ordering that mirrors the logic of any sound building. Moses personally performs each action, underscoring that the high leader of the people is simultaneously the chief liturgical servant. No task is beneath him. The Church Fathers saw in Moses here a figure of the bishop who must personally attend to the order of the Church's sacred space.

Exodus 40:19 — "He spread the covering over the tent, and put the roof of the tabernacle above on it, as Yahweh commanded Moses."

The final act — drawing the covering over the tent — encloses and consecrates the inner space. The Tabernacle had layered coverings: fine linen embroidered with cherubim (the innermost), then goat hair, then rams' skins dyed red, then finally a durable outer covering. This verse describes the completion of the protective envelope around the sacred dwelling. The closing phrase, "as Yahweh commanded Moses," again seals the action with the mark of divine authorization. What is remarkable is not complexity but fidelity — every beam, every clasp, every curtain is placed not by human aesthetic preference but by divine revelation.

Typological and Spiritual Senses

The early Church read the Tabernacle as a type of the Incarnation: as the Tabernacle was "raised up" to house the divine glory (the Shekinah, which fills it in 40:34–35), so the body of Christ is the true Tabernacle in which the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily (Colossians 2:9). Origen (Homilies on Exodus) identified each structural element with a dimension of the soul ordered toward God. The sockets represent humility (grounded in the earth), the boards the community of the faithful, the bars the bonds of charity that hold them together, and the roof covering the protection of divine providence. The raising of the Tabernacle thus becomes an image of the Church being built up in love (Ephesians 4:16).

The Catholic tradition brings several distinctive lenses to these verses. First, the theology of liturgical obedience: the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that "the liturgy is the work of the whole Christ" (CCC 1187) and that its forms are not arbitrary human inventions but received realities. Moses' exact compliance with God's instructions prefigures the Church's understanding that authentic worship — especially the Mass — is not something we design from below but something received from above. The Second Vatican Council's Sacrosanctum Concilium (§22) insists that "no other person, not even a priest, may add, remove, or change anything in the liturgy on his own authority," an ecclesiological principle with its deepest roots precisely here, in Moses' meticulous obedience.

Second, this passage grounds the theology of sacred space. The Church has always maintained that certain places are set apart for the presence of God in a unique sense. Laudate Deum and the earlier Orientale Lumen both speak of the irreplaceable role of sacred architecture in mediating the transcendence of God. The Tabernacle — portable, yet precisely ordered — teaches that even in pilgrimage, in the midst of the desert wandering that is human life, God wills to dwell with his people in structured, beautiful form.

Third, the typological connection to the Incarnation is affirmed in the Prologue of John (1:14), where "the Word became flesh and tabernacled (ἐσκήνωσεν) among us." St. Cyril of Alexandria and St. Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologiae III, q. 37) both develop this: the construction of the Tabernacle reaches its fulfillment in the Virgin Mary, who, like the Tabernacle, was prepared by God, overshadowed by the divine presence, and became the dwelling place of the Most High.

For a contemporary Catholic, Moses' sevenfold "as Yahweh commanded" is an uncomfortable mirror. We live in a culture that prizes personal authenticity above received form, where "doing it my way" is treated as the highest expression of integrity — including, sometimes, in worship. These verses call Catholics to examine whether their approach to the liturgy, to prayer, and to the life of the Church is fundamentally receptive or fundamentally self-expressive.

More concretely: every Catholic who prepares a church for Mass — the sacristan arranging the vessels, the priest vesting carefully, the deacon setting the ambo — participates in Moses' action. The precision is not legalism; it is love. When we understand that the sacred space we inhabit on Sunday is the meeting point between heaven and earth, every board set in place and every covering spread matters. Practically, this passage invites Catholics to resist the temptation to approach liturgy as consumers evaluating a product, and instead to enter it as servants building a dwelling for the living God — attentive, reverent, and joyfully obedient to what has been handed down.