Tabernacle

Moses was instructed at Mount Sinai to construct and transport the tabernacle[1] with the Israelites on their journey through the wilderness and their subsequent conquest of the Promised Land.

[2] It was constructed of 4 woven layers of curtains and 48 15-foot tall standing wood boards overlaid in gold and held in place by its bars and silver sockets and was richly furnished with valuable materials taken from Egypt at God's command.

The English word tabernacle derives from the Latin tabernāculum (meaning "tent" or "hut"), which in ancient Roman religion was a ritual structure.

[6][7] In Greek, including the Septuagint, the Hebrew is translated σκηνή (skēnē), itself a Semitic loanword meaning "tent".

[6] This view is based on the existence of significant parallels between the biblical Tabernacle and similar structures from ancient Egypt during the Late Bronze Age.

In the center of this enclosure was a rectangular sanctuary draped with goat-hair curtains, with the roof coverings made from rams' skins.

This area housed the Ark of the Covenant, inside which were the two stone tablets brought down from Mount Sinai by Moses on which were written the Ten Commandments, a golden urn holding the manna, and Aaron's rod which had budded and borne ripe almonds (Exodus 16:33–34, Numbers 17:1–11, Deuteronomy 10:1–5; Hebrews 9:2–5).

Anyone else who goes too near the tabernacle will be executed.Twice a day, a priest would stand in front of the golden prayer altar and burn fragrant incense.

[22] It was at the door of the tabernacle that the community wept in sorrow when all the chiefs of the people were impaled and the men who had joined in worship to the Baal of Peor were killed on God's orders.

The Ark was eventually brought to Jerusalem, where it was placed "inside the tent David had pitched for it" (2 Samuel 6:17; 1 Chronicles 15:1), not in the tabernacle, which remained at Gibeon.

Some rabbis have commented on the proximity of the narrative of the tabernacle with that of the episode known as the sin of the golden calf recounted in Exodus 32:1–6.

A Mashkhanna must be built beside a river in order to perform maṣbuta (baptism) and other ceremonies because Living Water is an essential element in the Mandaean faith.