5.  The sacrifices were the central part of the Jewish ritual.  But sacrifices imply offerers, a personal God to whom the offering is made, and a priesthood through which it is presented.  In the primitive ages of the world, men offered sacrifices in their own behalf and that of their household in whatever place it was their chance to sojourn.  Gen. 4:4; 8:20; 12:7, 8; 31:54; 33:20; 35:1, 7; 46:1; Job 1:5; 42:8.  But upon the establishment of the Mosaic economy, the priestly office was restricted to the family of Aaron.  Thenceforward all who wished to offer sacrifices must bring them through the mediation of the priests of Aaron’s line.  It belonged to the nature of the Mosaic economy, that God should have a visible dwelling-place among the Israelites.  The directions for the construction of the tabernacle with its furniture are introduced by the words:  “Let them make me a sanctuary; that I may dwell among them.”  Exod. 25:8.  The material sanctuary, then, was God’s visible dwelling-place, where he manifested himself to his people, and received their worship according to the rites of his own appointment; the whole being, as we shall see, typical of higher realities pertaining to our redemption through Christ.  And as this earthly sanctuary was God’s chosen dwelling-place, it followed, as a necessary consequence, that after its erection all the sacrifices must be brought to its altar, and presented there to God through the priesthood of his appointment.

6.  The Mosaic tabernacle was a movable structure very simple in its plan.  Its frame-work on three sides consisted of upright boards, or rather timbers (for, according to the unanimous representation of the Jewish rabbins, they were a cubit in thickness), standing side by side, and kept in position by transverse bars passing through golden rings.  Thus was formed an enclosure ten cubits in height, thirty cubits in length from east to west, and ten cubits in width; the eastern end, which constituted the front, having only a vail suspended from five pillars of shittim-wood.  Over this enclosure, and hanging down on either side, was spread a rich covering formed by coupling together ten curtains of “fine-twined linen, and blue, and purple, and scarlet, with cherubim of cunning work.”  Over this was another covering, formed from the union of eleven curtains of goats’ hair; and above two other coverings, the one of rams’ skins dyed red, and the other, or outermost, of badgers’ skins.  Surrounding the tabernacle was a court one hundred cubits long and fifty wide, enclosed by curtains of fine-twined linen supported on pillars five cubits high.  The tabernacle itself was divided by a vail supported on four pillars into two parts; the inner sanctuary, or “holy of holies,” ten cubits every way, and the outer, or “holy place,” twenty cubits long by ten in breadth and height.