Daily Scripture Reading Exodus 38:21 - 39:7
Most Christian congregations around the world have a church building. As you know, it takes time and money to build a church building. The money goes towards both the materials needed to construct the building and the construction workers needed to do the actual work.
Many Christians have the mentality that congregations should spend as little money as possible when building a church. This is particularly true in evangelicalism. Some Christians think it is wrong to build expensive churches. After all, any dollar spent on a building is one less dollar that could feed the poor or support overseas missionaries. This prevalent mentality means church buildings often end up being simple, small, and constructed of cheap materials.
The 38th chapter of Exodus gives us some insight into what it would cost to build the wilderness tabernacle in today’s dollars. This chapter specifies how much gold, silver, and bronze were consumed while building the tabernacle. By doing some conversions, we can estimate the value of the materials used to build the tabernacle. It is not a small sum. This means, at a bare minimum, we need to consider the possibility that there is nothing wrong with a congregation building a fabulous, expensive structure in which to gather as a congregation.
The 36th through 38th chapters of Exodus list the items that were crafted for the tabernacle. There were walls, curtains, coverings, furniture, clasps, and bases. The end of chapter 38 summarizes the amount of materials used.
Ex. 38:21 ¶ These are the things numbered for the tabernacle, the tabernacle of the testimony, as they were numbered according to the command of Moses, for the service of the Levites, by the hand of Ithamar the son of Aaron the priest.
Ex. 38:22 Now Bezalel the son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah, made all that Yahweh had commanded Moses.
Ex. 38:23 With him was Oholiab the son of Ahisamach, of the tribe of Dan, a craftsman and a skillful designer and a weaver in blue and in purple and in scarlet material and fine linen.
Ex. 38:24 ¶ All the gold that was used for the work, in all the work of the sanctuary, even the gold of the wave offering, was 29 talents and 730 shekels, according to the shekel of the sanctuary.
A talent was roughly 75 pounds, 34 kg or 1,200 troy ounces. A shekel was about .4 ounces or 11.5 grams. This year, the price of gold is around $4,750 per troy ounce, so one talent of gold is worth $5.7 million in today’s dollars, meaning 29 talents of gold would be worth about $165 million today.
Ex. 38:25 The silver of those of the congregation who were numbered was 100 talents and 1,775 shekels, according to the shekel of the sanctuary;
Ex. 38:26 a beka a head (that is, half a shekel according to the shekel of the sanctuary), for each one who passed over to those who were numbered, from twenty years old and upward, for 603,550 men.
Ex. 38:27 One hundred talents of silver were for casting the bases of the sanctuary and the bases of the veil; one hundred bases for one hundred talents, a talent for a base.
Again, a talent was roughly 75 pounds, 34 kg, or 1,200 troy ounces. The price of silver this year is around $75 per troy ounce. This means 1 talent of silver is worth around $90,000, so 100 talents of silver would be worth around $9 million today.
Ex. 38:28 Of the 1,775 shekels, he made hooks for the pillars and overlaid their tops and made bands for them.
Ex. 38:29 The bronze of the wave offering was 70 talents and 2,400 shekels.
A talent of bronze is roughly 75 pounds, a pound of bronze costs roughly $3; therefore, a talent of bronze is worth $225, meaning 70 talents of bronze is worth approximately $15,000.
The value of the gold, silver, and bronze used to create the tabernacle is roughly $165 million dollars in today’s currency.
For comparison, St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City is estimated to have cost around $7 billion to build. The estimate spent to build Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, France is around $2 billion. The People’s Salvation Cathedral in Bucharest, Romania was completed in the last 10 years at a cost of approximately $313 million. The Tabernacle of Glory in North Miami, Florida opened a couple years ago and cost around $60 million.
Ex. 38:30 With it he made the bases to the doorway of the tent of meeting, and the bronze altar and its bronze grating, and all the utensils of the altar,
Ex. 38:31 and the bases of the court all around and the bases of the gate of the court, and all the pegs of the tabernacle and all the pegs of the court all around.
Ex. 39:1 ¶ Moreover, from the blue and purple and scarlet material, they made finely woven garments for ministering in the holy place as well as the holy garments which were for Aaron, just as Yahweh had commanded Moses.
Ex. 39:2 ¶ He made the ephod of gold, and of blue and purple and scarlet material, and fine twisted linen.
Ex. 39:3 Then they hammered out gold sheets and cut them into threads to be woven in with the blue and the purple and the scarlet material and the fine linen, the work of a skillful designer.
Ex. 39:4 They made joining shoulder pieces for the ephod; it was joined at its two upper ends.
Ex. 39:5 The skillfully woven band which was on it was like its workmanship, of the same material: of gold, and of blue and purple and scarlet material, and fine twisted linen, just as Yahweh had commanded Moses.
The Bible does not specify the amount of fabric used to make the priestly garments so a value is hard to calculate, but the value was probably at least $5,000 and perhaps as high as $25,000.
Ex. 39:6 ¶ They made the onyx stones, set all around in filigree settings of gold; they were engraved like the engravings of a signet, according to the names of the sons of Israel.
Ex. 39:7 And he placed them on the shoulder pieces of the ephod, as stones of remembrance for the sons of Israel, just as Yahweh had commanded Moses.
Many Christians have the mentality that congregations should spend as little money as possible when building a church, with some people thinking it is wrong to build expensive churches. However, the tabernacle in the wilderness was not created with cheap materials. Today, it would require at least $150 million to build the tabernacle, not including the cost of the labor necessary to create the tabernacle.
That is not a small sum. This means, at a bare minimum, we need to consider the possibility that there is nothing wrong with a congregation building a fabulous, expensive structure in which to gather as a congregation.
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“Scripture quotations taken from the (LSB®) Legacy Standard Bible®, Copyright © 2021 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Managed in partnership with Three Sixteen Publishing Inc. LSBible.org and 316publishing.com.”