The Pun
The Prayer
With bare feet on holy ground, Moses received God’s command to ask Pharaoh to let His people go. On the day that would happen, the women were to ask their Egyptian neighbors for jewelry (Exodus 3:22). When the tenth plague was approaching, the Lord reiterated this imperative (Exodus 11:2-3) and so the women obeyed, thus plundering the Egyptians (Exodus 12:35-36). The freed daughters of Jacob walked out of Egypt in style!
After passing through the Red Sea and leaving behind the slavery of Egyptians, the children of Israel chose to melt a great deal of Egypt’s jewelry and form them into the image of an Egyptian god, a golden calf (Exodus 32:3-4). The plunder of the enslaving land they left was forged into a new form of spiritual shackle to a false god incapable of salvation.
In anger, Moses took the golden calf, burned it, ground it to powder, scattered it on the water and made the people drink what was formerly their ornamentation (Exodus 32:20). God promised that they would still inherit the promised land despite their sin but that He would not go with them. Upon hearing this, God’s chosen people grieved and so they stripped themselves of their ornaments and never put them back on throughout their desert wanderings (Exodus 33:1-6). On behalf of the people, Moses expressed to the Lord that they would rather stay in the desert with Him than go to the promised land without. The Lord then promised He would.
Following this act of repentance, Jacob’s children responded in a generous act of obedience, donating their precious metals and jewels to the construction of the tabernacle where God would be worshiped. One specific donation received a special call out:
“He made the basin of bronze and its stand of bronze, from the mirrors of the ministering women who ministered in the entrance of the tent of meeting.” (Exodus 38:8)
This basin stood between the altar and the holy place where prayers were offered, where the lamp stand and table of the presence stood on either side of the veil that hung, hiding the throne of God behind it. Before moving into the closest communion with God, purification must be made here.
No longer looking and judging themselves attractive by their own standard, now God’s priests would look into their reflection in the waters held by burnished bronze. Now it mattered little what they thought of themselves and it mattered completely what God thought of them.
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