Exodus 38 Summary

Bezaleel constructs the bronze altar of burnt offering — five cubits square and three cubits high — with horns on its four corners, a bronze grating, rings, and carrying staves of shittim wood overlaid with bronze, along with all its bronze vessels. He also fashions the bronze laver and its base from the mirrors donated by the women who assembled at the tabernacle door, and completes the entire courtyard with its linen hangings, pillared sockets of bronze, and silver hooks and fillets, topped by a colorful embroidered gate hanging. The chapter closes with a formal audit of materials used: the gold of the offering totaled 29 talents and 730 shekels; the silver, collected as a half-shekel (bekah) poll tax from 603,550 men aged twenty and upward, came to 100 talents and 1,775 shekels — 100 talents cast into the sanctuary sockets and the remainder used for hooks and overlaying the chapiters. The bronze offering totaled 70 talents and 2,400 shekels, used for the tabernacle door sockets, the bronze altar and its grating, and all the pins of the tabernacle and court, with the inventory kept under the oversight of Ithamar son of Aaron.