Saturday, May 8, 2010

The Tabernacle at Gibeon

And the sons of Reuben the firstborn of Israel (for he was the firstborn; but, inasmuch as he defiled his father’s bed, his birthright was given to the sons of Joseph the son of Israel; but the genealogy is not registered according to the birthright, for Judah prevailed among his brethren, and of him was the prince, but the birthright was Joseph’s)
(1 Chronicles 5:1--2)


There is some significance to the inter-relationships between the tribes of Israel in the Old Testament. The first couple verses of 1 Chronicles 5 give us a glimpse into these relationships. We're told that Reuben forfeited his birthright to Joseph by dishonouring his father; but that the Prince is to come from Judah. And we recall that Joseph's younger son, Ephraim, actually received the inheritance in preference to Manasseh, according to Jacob's blessing in Genesis 48:18--20.

We see Ephraim and Judah begin to distinguish themselves in the Exodus: it was Caleb (from Judah) and Joshua (from Ephraim) who brought back the good report from the land at Kadesh-Barnea. And as a result, those two were allowed to enter the land after 40 years.

As an aside, it's noteworthy that the Levites were apparently exempted from that ban. Eleazar was certainly of age at Kadesh-Barnea: he had been ordained as a priest at Horeb. But Eleazar entered the land as high priest, in place of his father Aaron. It is significant that Levi sent no spy into the land at Kadesh-Barnea, and were in fact excluded from the numbering of the Israelites at Horeb. Ada Habershon sees their exemption at Horeb as being the reason they're not under the ban on entering the land. I think Numbers 14:29 lends credence to this notion:
In this wilderness shall your carcases fall; and all that were numbered of you, according to your whole number from twenty years old and upwards, who have murmured against me


When the people came into the land, they came in under Joshua (the spy from Ephraim). Initially the Tabernacle was set up in Gilgal, but once the land was divided it was settled in Shiloh, which is in Ephraim (Joshua 18:1). Shiloh was the location of the Tabernacle until Eli, when the Ark was taken by the Philistines.

Here it gets a little murky. The Ark was taken under Eli, and when the Philistines returned it, it ended up in the house of Abinadab. 1 Samuel says it was there 20 years, and David went to Abinadab to get it. So it must have been during Saul's time that it went to Kirjath-jearim.

The Scripture asserts several times that the Tabernacle was in Gibeon in David's time, and it was still there when Solomon ascended the throne.
And the tabernacle of Jehovah, which Moses had made in the wilderness, and the altar of burnt-offering, were at that time in the high place at Gibeon.
(1 Chronicles 21:29--30)

So David brought the Ark from Kirjath-jearim to Jerusalem while the Tabernacle was in Gibeon.

The Scripture tells us a few things about Gibeon:

  • Joshua made peace with the Gibeonites when they deceived him about their origin. As a result, Gibeon wasn't conquered by the Israelites (Joshua 9).

  • Gibeon was one of the "great cities" in Canaan (Joshua 10:2).

  • Gibeon was one of the priests' cities in Benjamin (Joshua 21:17)

  • In David's time, the Gibeonites were still identifiably Amorites (2 Samuel 21:2).

  • Gibeon was where "the great high place" was (1 Kings 3:4).



So the Tabernacle went from Gilgal to Shiloh, (to Nob?), to Gibeon; and the Ark went from Gilgal to Shiloh, to Kirjath-jearim, to Jerusalem.

Psalm 78 gives us the Divine commentary on this:

And he forsook the tabernacle at Shiloh, the tent where he had dwelt among men...
And he rejected the tent of Joseph, and chose not the tribe of Ephraim,
But chose the tribe of Judah, the mount Zion which he loved;
And he built his sanctuary like the heights, like the earth which he hath founded for ever.
(Psalm 78:60, 67--69)

According to Psalm 78, the Lord "forsook the tabernacle at Shiloh". The Ark then leaves Ephraim and goes to Kirjath-jearim, in Judah. But the Tabernacle takes a different route: it goes to Gibeon in Benjamin and stays there.

We notice too that the leadership of Israel transitions from Ephraim to Judah, by way of Saul, a Benjamite. So where the Ark is moved from Shiloh to Kirjath-jearim, the Tabernacle follows the king and goes to Gibeon.

And in Gibeon, the Tabernacle (without the Ark) is apparently set up in the "great high place," and the priests continue the ceremonial order there, without the Ark:
And Zadok the priest, and his brethren the priests, before the tabernacle of Jehovah in the high place that was at Gibeon, to offer up burnt-offerings to Jehovah on the altar of burnt-offering continually, morning and evening, and according to all that is written in the law of Jehovah, which he commanded Israel;
(1 Chronicles 16:39--40)


And, in fact, when Solomon took the throne, he went to Gibeon to sacrifice at the high place in Gibeon:
and Solomon, and all the congregation with him, went to the high place at Gibeon; for there was God’s tent of meeting which Moses the servant of Jehovah had made in the wilderness. But the ark of God had David brought up from Kirjath-jearim to the place that David had prepared for it; for he had spread a tent for it at Jerusalem. And the brazen altar that Bezaleel the son of Uri, the son of Hur, had made, was there before the tabernacle of Jehovah; and Solomon and the congregation sought unto it. And Solomon offered there upon the brazen altar before Jehovah which was at the tent of meeting; and he offered up a thousand burnt-offerings upon it.
(2 Chronicles 1:3--6)

The account in 1 Kings is a little different: it seems to indicate Solomon was actually practicing idolatry when he went to Gibeon:
Only, the people sacrificed on the high places; for there was no house built to the name of Jehovah, until those days. And Solomon loved Jehovah, walking in the statutes of David his father; only, he sacrificed and burned incense on the high places. And the king went to Gibeon to sacrifice there; for that was the great high place: a thousand burnt-offerings did Solomon offer up upon that altar.
(1 Kings 3:2--4)


So what can we learn from all this history? I suppose we can start by noticing that there is a difference between where the Ark is, and where the Tabernacle is. The Ark was where God's presence was: it was at the Ark that the blood was presented on the Day of Atonement; it was at the Ark that God promised to meet the people (Exodus 25:22). But when the Ark was in Jerusalem, the people went to Gibeon to meet God.

And we might notice that the priests continued to preform the religious ceremonies the Law prescribed when the Tabernacle was in Gibeon, and the Ark was in Jerusalem. So the priests were apparently quite content to continue in their ceremonial duties, even when God's presence was actually gone.

And if we carry this notion of the Ark representing God's presence while the Tabernacle represented the outward observances of religion, we notice that the outward religion followed the political power and settled in Benjamin when a Benjamite was on the throne. But the Ark wasn't there. The Ark was already in Judah, in Kirjath-jearim.

According to Psalm 78, it was actually the Tabernacle that God forsook when the Ark left Shiloh. There was still a religion connected with that Tabernacle, but the Ark itself had left. The Ark and the religious ceremonies weren't reunited until Solomon dedicated the new Temple in Jerusalem.

Perhaps the most chilling feature of the separation of the Ark and the Tabernacle was, that the Tabernacle became mixed up with pagan worship. Without the Ark, the Tabernacle was moved to Gibeon, one of the great Amorite cities; and not only was it a great city of the Amorites, it was the one city with which the Israelites had formed a treaty. Gibeon hadn't ever been conquered: it was the one city which had made peace with Joshua. And in Gibeon, the Tabernacle was set up in "the great high place". And 2 Kings explicitly tells us that the people worshipped the Lord in the high places.

But the Law explicitly forbade sacrificing in the high places:
Ye shall utterly destroy all the places wherein the nations which ye shall dispossess have served their gods, upon the high mountains, and upon the hills, and under every green tree; and ye shall break down their altars, and shatter their statues, and burn their Asherahs with fire; and ye shall hew down the graven images of their gods, and ye shall destroy the names of them out of that place. Ye shall not do so unto Jehovah your God; but unto the place which Jehovah your God will choose out of all your tribes to set his name there, his habitation shall ye seek, and thither thou shalt come; and thither ye shall bring your burnt-offerings and your sacrifices, and your tithes, and the heave-offering of your hand, and your vows, and your voluntary-offerings, and the firstlings of your kine and of your sheep; and ye shall eat there before Jehovah your God, and ye shall rejoice, ye and your households, in all the business of your hand, wherein Jehovah thy God hath blessed thee.
(Deuteronomy 12:2--7)

The Israelites were to have destroyed the high places when they came into the land. They weren't to offer sacrifices whereever they thought was a good place: there was one place where they were to gather to worship. But what they actually did was, to allow some of the pagan practices of the Amorites survive. And then they took the Tabernacle (sans God's actual presence) and set it up right alongside those pagan shrines.

I think the most telling statement about this in the whole Scripture is Rabshakeh's statements to Hezekiah's men:
And if ye say to me, We rely upon Jehovah our God: is it not he whose high places and whose altars Hezekiah has removed, saying to Judah and Jerusalem, Ye shall worship before this altar in Jerusalem?
(2 Kings 18:22)

Rabshakeh, a pagan, saw what Hezekiah had done in destroying the high places (which ought to have been done hundreds of years before under Joshua) and interpreted it as defiling the Lord's holy places. Jewish worship must have been quite a mess, if even the pagans watching them couldn't distinguish Jewish worship from what they themselves had done. Imagine what it must have been like, if an observer could see Hezekiah ending paganism and think he was stamping out Judaism. It makes me wonder just how many paganisms the Israelites had adopted.

I've probably mentioned this before, but one of the most alarming lessons of idolatry I see in Scripture is, that it gets so mixed into true worship that the people seem to actually think they're worshipping the Lord when they're bowing to their idols.

18 comments:

EPIMENOS said...

Very well done. I'm going to have to chew on this one for a while.

Anonymous said...

I strongly disagree with the notion that Solomon idolatrously worshipped upon (or alongside) a pagan altar at Gibeon.

Some important points to keep in mind are:

1. Sacrificing at high places located in different cities was allowed and accepted for some years after the ark of the covenant was removed from the tent and before Solomon's temple was properly inaugurated. Carefully compare these references: (1Sa 7:7-9; 10:8; 11:14, 15; 16:4, 5; 1Ki 3:3; 1Ch 21:26-30)

2. Gibeon was a divinely reassigned city some 400+ years earlier upon conquering the promised land. Being reassigned to the Aaronic priesthood it was evidently considered holy as was Jerusalem, which was also Canaanite beforehand. (Jos 21:17-19) Even though the Bible doesn't say, it would be incorrect to conclude that Solomon or any other worshipper of the true God previous could not have destroyed some pagan high place of Gibeon (of which the bible is silent) if it were still erected near the new tabernacle location.

3. It is illogical that Jehovah would appear to Solomon in a dream if he was not supporting his sacrificial efforts at Gibeon.

4. The Gibeonites (and possibly the people of Kiriathjearim; Jos 9:17) were treated very differently from the other Canaanites for their fear of God. Being involved in the covenant agreement made with Israel, they were even objects of a rescue operation in the days of Joshua. It is very possible that they did not have a pagan place of worship on "every high place or under every luxuriant tree" (Deut 12:2) in the zone by the time of Saul's day. The Bible does not say why the tabernacle was moved to Gibeon, but this would be a good reason. True, the Bible doesn't say that the city of Gibeon was conquered by Israel, but it was made a Levitical city in ways that are very obvious to this reader.


5. The altar used at Gibeon was clearly not pagan, it was the copper altar made by Bezalel and transported along with the tabernacle. Carefully compare these references: (1Ki 3:4; 1Ch 16:39, 40; 21:29, 30; 2Ch 1:3-6)

6. Although Solomon was not immune to the pressure to commit idolatry, it was only after he had foreign wives influence him to build such places, did he do it and wrongly support it. (1 Ki 11:9-13)

Thanks.

clumsy ox said...

Anonymous,

You are free to disagree as strongly (or indeed as weakly) as you like.

You might want to consider Ezekiel 20 and the first few verses of 1 Kings 3. 1 Kings 3 makes it clear that Solomon was involved in idolatry almost from the beginning. The narrative of his going to Gibeon follows immediately on the assertion that he burned incense to idols.

Ezekiel 20 asserts that the Israelites did not actually "fall into" idolatry: they had never actually stopped the idolatry they brought with them from Egypt.

Your argument that sacrificing in the high places was allowed is unconvincing. It had been expressly forbidden. Cf. Romans 2:4 & 5. Whether or not He took swift and terrible judgement on the people who disobeyed, they were disobeying.

But no doubt I take a minority view on this.

However, I really think you ought to reconsider point #3: "It is illogical that Jehovah would appear to Solomon in a dream if he was not supporting his sacrificial efforts at Gibeon."

Logical or not, the Scripture uniformly presents God as full of grace. The God who sent His Son to die for wicked sinners (Romans 5:8) is certainly the sort of Person we'd expect to approach an idolater in grace.

Your point may be logical; but it flies in the face of the testimony of Moses, the prophets, the Lord Jesus, and the apostles. The God who is there is the God who loves sinners and forgives their sin. He gave His Son to die for sinners when they were still sinners. He is the God who justifies the ungodly (Romans 4:5).

It is the very essence of the gospel that God does not treat us like we deserve. If we see nothing else in Scripture, we must surely see that.

I can think of nothing more consistent with the testimony of Scripture than Jehovah showing favour to Solomon despite ongoing sin.

Anonymous said...

God responded to sincerity in the case of Solomon at Gibeon, but his motive was to bring Solomon to God's appointed place for burnt offering which was divinely revealed to David during the deliverance from the plague in 1Chron. 21. There the Angel of the Lord with a Revealed (Sword) Word directed David thru the prophet to God's choice for a location for the burnt offering that David paid for with a full price. (Christ paying the full price for our relief from the plague of sin). Notice that the altar of burnt offering in Gibeon was actually an altar with no power because the Ark was the assurance for the covering of sin. Since the Ark had been moved there by David in the year 1042 B.C. Solomon had to offer burnt offerings in the same location as the abiding place of the Ark. There could be no blessing on the building efforts of Solomon without the altar of burnt offerings being located in the same location as the Ark (Word of God.) The abiding peace in Solomon's reign that enabled the strength of Israel to be concentrated on building rather than warfare, was due to the Ark being located in the same place as the Altar of Burnt Offering chosen by God. 1Chron. 22:1. This all speaks of the beginning of the Gentile dispensation. Solomon typifying the Holy Spirit as the Great Builder of the Temple and the daughter of Pharoah typifying the Bride of Jesus Christ. We must look at the complete picture presented to us in the scriptures.
Religious people always look to past victories and set their altars there. Gibeon was a victory that was past tense. (Joshua's victory in Josh 10. Creation stopped to listen to Joshua) but in 1Kings 3, the Creator, not the creation, stopped to listen to Solomon. Upon receiving the Gift of Discernment and Understanding, he immediately left Gibeon and began to offer burnt sacrifices in Jerusalem because the promise was that he would be blessed if he obeyed the statutes and commandments of his Father David.
By living in the Present tense location of the Word (Ark), God assured Solomon of a peaceful reign during the building of the Temple. Living in Past Victories is a sign of a back-slidden congregation.

May God bless

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Renewed Hope said...

Was hunting for something about Gibeon and the tabernacle in way of research about the Threshing Floor of Ornan and the comment that David didn't go to the Tabernacle at Gibeon for fear of the Lord...Appreciated your background here and it aligns with what I have been learning of the role of the Ark and the tabernacle...how they were once again joined when David built a tent for the Ark on Mt. Moriah at the Threshing floor of Ornan....again, separation from the idolatrous past, the pride of man that we could continue worship an empty tabernacle without His presence...and the restoration of the Presence "according to protocol"...as seen at the threshing floor of Nacon and the eventual journey to Jerusalem according to the way of the Lord and not the desire of man. I appreciate the time and effort you put into this study...perhaps I will be led back to your blog again!

Mark Mowry said...

Great lesson! In my reading through Chronicles 1&2 I kept bumping into the reference of the high place in Gibeon, and my curiosity eventually became strong enough at 2 Chron. 1:6 to finally decide I needed an answer as to why the tabernacle wasn't at Jerusalem in the first place. I wasn't really connecting the specification that the ark was in one place (Jerusalem), the bronze altar/tabernacle paraphernalia in another (Gibeon). I might not be the sharpest tool in the shed, but I suspect that others often gloss over this very vital bit of information as well.

Your commentary wasn't exactly the first that came up on the search engines, by the way. I had to keep digging to find yours.

It was well worth it however, and I appreciate your careful explanation of the events surrounding the locations of the tabernacle and the ark, and your insights regarding where true worship takes place. It's far too easy to think that we have offered our reasonable service of worship to God when in fact we might only be paying homage to tradition, fads, or other displays of the arm of flesh. Bless you, CO!

Jeanne said...

Thank you for this in depth commentary. This is a subject that I have always been curious about and your blog has been immensely helpful.

GraceTruth7 said...

What are your thoughts on Exo 20:24 versus the bronze altar. Someone said the "altar of earth" instruction was temporary before the building of the tabernacle. Another person said that, the bronze altar had stones/earth inside it.

Anonymous said...

And isn't it no coincidence this is happening today in the name of Christianity? Many do NOT worship the Mashiach, Son of the Living God, Yeshua haMashiach of Natzaret of the SCROLLS, and yet majority of Christians think they are.

Unknown said...

Thank you so much for your detailed commentary on the subject.since long Iam searching for it in Bible. Now I could understand and it will be helpful to me.thsnk you once again.

Anonymous said...

However, after King David moved the Ark to the City of David he apparently instructed Zadock and his priests to continue serving at the Mosaic Tabernacle in Gibeon!

So he left Asaph and his brothers there before the ark of the covenant of the Lord to minister before the ark regularly, as every day’s work required; and Obed-Edom with his sixty-eight brethren, including Obed-Edom the son of Jeduthun, and Hosah, to be gatekeepers; and Zadok the priest and his brethren the priests, before the tabernacle of the Lord at the high place that was at Gibeon, to offer burnt offerings to the Lord on the altar of burnt offering regularly morning and evening, and to do according to all that is written in the Law of the Lord which He commanded Israel;
1 Chronicles 16:37-40

I believe Solomon was paying homage to Moses' Tabernacle for the last time. Perhaps shutting down that place because the Temple he had built was now to be the official place for God's Name!

Just a thought.

The King & Priest said...

One question I'm still struggling with is, why didn't David send the Ark to Gibeon? I understand that Gibeon was a tabernacle forsaken by the Lord but on the one hand David abides by the Law to have the priests carry the Ark from Obed-Edom and he allows Zadok to carry on in Gibeon to Satisfy the law, then on the other hand he sets up a whole different tabernacle for the Ark.
God is 100% OK with all of this and still says David is his guy. Now my question is how did David know to do this? What pattern or word was David referencing to know this is the will of God? I feel in knowing this it would give us a glimpse into understanding how David decoded the heart of the Father an when Amos 9v11 declare that God will raise up the tabernacle of David in the last days, I believe he is describing a people whose able to decode the heart of the Lord and not just His words...

Anonymous said...

So much to ponder..in this current time I pray more people earnestly seek truths in the Bible without going to far from the branch..let us all seek the spirit of truth without "visions" that could be misleading

Shalom

Steffen said...

Very good. Deep insights. Be blessed

Steffen said...

I assume that Salomo is a foresight of the antichrist. Your writing is a confirmation to me.

Brandon said...

I was researching why the temple was moved to Gibeon, and why the priests were sacrificing at Gibeon. It now makes sense that the tabernacle was moved to Gibeon since Saul was from Benjamin and Gibeon is in Benjamin. All very helpful and insightful information. Thank you!

Anonymous said...

A comment coming late to the conversation this being July 2023. My question is not about Gibeon, but about the priesthood.?What remained in Gibeon was under the order of Aaron, what was in Jerusalem was under the order of Melchizedek. In