Climax of Creation

Michael Morales (The Tabernacle Pre-Figured, 277) argues that “the narrative arc from Gen 1-3 to Exod 40 may be traced as the expulsion from the divine presence to the gained re-entry into the divine presence via the tabernacle cultus, from the profound descent of Adam to the dramatic ‘ascent’ of the high priest into the holy of holies.”

Earlier, he gave a fuller account of the same tale: After Adam, Cain and then the whole human race are banished more intensely from God’s presence (Genesis 4-6). This reaches “an apex as the profanation of creation (as macro-temple) finally calls for an end/return to chaos, righteous Noah, with his household and a remnant of creatures, being delivered through an ark whose plans are divinely revealed” (248).

Babel is another expulsion, “an anti-gate liturgy” and a further removal from the presence of Yahweh. But then Yahweh prepares for the reentry with the call of Abraham, an act which culminates in the exodus and the construction of the tabernacle at the foot of Sinai. Babel and the tabernacle thus form “antipodes in the narrative ark.” 

All this implies that the tabernacle cult is not merely “worship” but “the means by which the order and purpose of creation is reestablished – that is, creation and cult are of a piece” (248).

Genesis and Exodus thus trace a three-stage story of the descent of God’s glory-presence from the mountain to the tabernacle: “(1) establishing the God of creation as the God of the Patriarchs through the narratives of Genesis; (2) establishing the God of the Patriarchs as the God who calls Moses . . . (3) the glory cloud’s moving from the cosmic mountain (religion of the Patriarchs) to the tabernacle (cultus of Israel)” (272). 

Creation comes to its climax when Yahweh completes His “incarnational” descent from the mountains of Eden, Ararat, and Sinai into the portable tent; the Sabbath completion of Genesis 2 anticipates the “completion” of the tabernacle on the first day of the first month (Exodus 40).  

Of course, that climax is provisional, and the end of the Genesis-Exodus arc is simultaneously the beginning of a new arc. But the incarnational achievement of Genesis-Exodus is permanent: Hereafter, through the rest of Israel’s history, Yahweh will be associated with the house and the priestly service of that house. Yahweh’s story, and Israel’s, will be Yahweh-in-His-House, Yahweh-leaving-His-House, Yahweh-returning-home.