The Hebrew word for tabernacle is mishkan, “dwelling place,” where God could be at home.
Exodus 25:10-22 begins with the ark, the focal point of the furniture in the tabernacle to be built for the Lord. Let’s read its description: “two and a half cubits shall be its length, a cubit and a half its width, and a cubit and a half its height. And you shall overlay it with pure gold, inside and out you shall overlay it, and shall make on it a molding of gold all around” (vv 10-11). A cubit could vary in length, but is usually taken to be about 18 inches. So the box measured 45” long by 27” wide and high. It was a container to hold some special objects, the first being “the Testimony” (v 21), the tablets the Lord would give Moses. Thus it became known as “the ark of the Testimony” (v 22). Made of virtually indestructible acacia wood, it was covered both inside and out with gold. On it was a solid gold lid called the Mercy Seat. Mercy Seat, kapporet in Hebrew, is linked with kaphar, the word for cover, and kippor, atonement. It was His throne on earth, and, says God, “there I will meet with you, and I will speak with you” (v 22). Of the same length and width as the ark, the lid also included this: “two cherubim of gold; of hammered work…you shall make the cherubim at the two ends of it of one piece with the mercy seat. And the cherubim shall stretch out their wings above, covering the mercy seat with their wings, and they shall face one another” (vv 18-20). Cherubim is the plural of cherub, a special group of angels. Wouldn’t this remind the people of the two cherubim that barred Adam and Eve from re-entering Eden after they sinned? No wonder the room where it was placed was called the Most Holy Place, the Holiness of Holinesses. Are we beginning to grasp how essential it is to “Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness” (Ps 29:2)?