After this he enters the tabernacle not made by hands. Who could follow someone traveling by such stages and raising his mind so high? Passing, as it were, from summit to summit through these ascents, he is always becoming higher than himself. First he leaves the foothills, separating himself from everyone too weak for the ascent. Then he hears the sounds of the trumpets and rises with them as he climbs. After this he slips into the invisible sanctuary of the knowledge of God. Yet he does not remain even there, but passes on to the tabernacle not made by hands. This is truly where the ascent reaches its goal.
It seems to me that in another sense the heavenly trumpet also becomes a teacher who guides the one ascending toward the tabernacle not made by hands. The ordered wonders of the heavens proclaim the wisdom displayed in created things and tell through what is visible the great glory of God, as Scripture says: “The heavens declare the glory of God.” Through the clarity and resonance of this teaching, the heavens become a loud trumpet, as one of the prophets says: “God sounded the trumpet from above.”
The person who has been purified and whose heart has become keen in hearing receives this sound—the knowledge of divine power that comes from contemplating created things. Through it he is led to press inward in thought to where God is. Scripture calls this place darkness, which, as we have said, means what is unknown and unseen. Entering it, he sees that tabernacle not made by hands, which he then shows to those below through a material copy.
What, then, is that tabernacle not made by hands, the one shown to Moses on the mountain? He is commanded to look to it as the original and, through a structure made by human hands, to display the wonder that is not made by hands: “See that you make everything according to the pattern shown to you on the mountain.” There were golden pillars resting on silver bases, with silver capitals as well. Other pillars stood alongside them, their capitals and bases made of bronze while the section between the two ends was silver. All these had a wooden support that did not admit decay, and around them the brilliance of these materials was spread in a circle.
There was also an ark shining with pure gold. Beneath the gold covering was wood that did not decay. There was also a lampstand, one at its base but divided at the top into seven branches, each carrying a lamp. The lampstand itself was made of gold, solid throughout, with no hollow interior and no wooden core. There were also an altar, the mercy seat, and the cherubim whose wings overshadowed the ark. All these were gold, not merely gilded on the surface, but made of the same material all the way through.
There were also richly worked curtains, woven with many colors and flowers interlaced across the fabric. These divided the tabernacle into what could be seen and entered by some of those serving there and what was inaccessible and forbidden to enter. The outer part was called the Holy Place, and the hidden part the Holy of Holies. There were also basins, firepans, the enclosure outside the curtains, coverings woven from hair, red-dyed skins, and many other things described in the account. Who could examine every detail with complete precision?
What realities not made by hands are these things imitating? And what benefit do those who see the material copy gain from what Moses saw there? I think it is best to leave an exact account of these things to those who, through the Spirit, have power to search the depths of God—if there is anyone able, as the Apostle says, to speak mysteries in the Spirit. What we offer here is only a conjectural understanding of the meaning before us. We leave it to our readers to judge whether it should be rejected or accepted.
Taking a small starting point from what has been said, and with Paul partially uncovering the mystery for us, we say that Moses was taught in figure the mystery of the tabernacle that contains all things. This tabernacle is Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God. In His own nature He is not made by hands, yet He can also be made when this tabernacle must be pitched among us. Thus the same tabernacle is, in a certain sense, both unmade and made: uncreated because He exists beforehand, yet created insofar as He received this material constitution.
What we are saying will perhaps not be obscure to those who have carefully received the mystery of our faith. For there is one tabernacle that existed before the ages and came into being at the end of the ages. It had no need to come into being in time—for how could what existed before times and ages need a temporal beginning? But for our sake, because through our lack of wisdom we had corrupted our own being, He accepted coming to be as we do, so that He might bring back into true being what had fallen outside it. This is the Only-begotten God, who contains all things in Himself and also pitched His own tabernacle among us.
If so great a reality is called a “tabernacle,” no lover of Christ should be troubled as though the word diminished the greatness of the divine nature. No other name is adequate to the nature it signifies either. Every name falls equally short of exact meaning, whether it seems small to us or seems to carry some greatness of thought.
All the other names are reverently applied according to some particular meaning to indicate divine power: physician, shepherd, defender, bread, angel, vine, way, door, dwelling, water, rock, spring, and the other names used of Him. In the same way, He is also called “tabernacle” according to a meaning fitting for God. The power that contains all beings, in whom all the fullness of deity dwells, the common shelter of the universe, the One who contains all things in Himself, is rightly called the tabernacle.
The vision must therefore correspond to the name, with each thing seen guiding us toward some understanding worthy of God. The great Apostle says that the flesh is the curtain of the lower tabernacle, perhaps because flesh is composed of the varied combination of the four elements. Perhaps he too had seen the tabernacle in the heavenly sanctuary, since the mysteries of Paradise were revealed to him through the Spirit. It is therefore reasonable, once we attend to this partial interpretation, to bring the whole vision of the tabernacle into harmony with that part.
The Apostle’s own words can make the riddles of the tabernacle clearer for us. Speaking of the Only-begotten, whom we have understood as the tabernacle, he says that in Him all things were created, visible and invisible, whether thrones, authorities, rulers, dominions, or powers. The silver-shining and gold-covered pillars, the carrying poles, the rings, the cherubim covering the ark with their wings, and everything else included in the description of the tabernacle represent the powers above the world. They are seen within the tabernacle and, by divine will, support the whole universe.
These are our true bearers: those sent out to serve for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation. Like rings fastened into our souls, they lift those lying on the earth through themselves toward the height of virtue. When the account says that cherubim cover with their wings the mysteries contained in the ark of the covenant, it confirms the interpretation we have given of the tabernacle. We have learned that this name belongs to the heavenly powers seen around the divine nature, the powers Isaiah and Ezekiel perceived. Nor should the ark of the covenant covered by wings sound strange. We learn something similar in Isaiah, where the prophet speaks in a riddle about wings: here it is the ark that is covered, there the face. The same reality is meant in both, and this seems to me to signify that the vision of these ineffable mysteries is beyond comprehension.