Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

Parashah 19: T’rumah (Contribution) 25:1–27:19

25 Adonai said to Moshe, ² “Tell the people of Isra’el to take up a collection for me — accept a contribution from anyone who wholeheartedly wants to give. ³ The contribution you are to take from them is to consist of gold, silver and bronze; ⁴ blue, purple and scarlet yarn; fine linen, goat’s hair, ⁵ tanned ram skins and fine leather; acacia-wood; ⁶ oil for the light, spices for the anointing oil and for the fragrant incense; ⁷ onyx stones and other stones to be set, for the ritual vest and breastplate.

⁸ “They are to make me a sanctuary, so that I may live among them. ⁹ You are to make it according to everything I show you — the design of the tabernacle and the design of its furnishings. This is how you are to make it.

¹⁰ “They are to make an ark of acacia-wood three-and-three-quarters feet long, two-and-a-quarter feet wide and two-and-a-quarter feet high. ¹¹ You are to overlay it with pure gold — overlay it both inside and outside — and put a molding of gold around the top of it. ¹² Cast four gold rings for it, and attach them to its four feet, two rings on each side. ¹³ Make poles of acacia-wood, and overlay them with gold. ¹⁴ Put the poles into the rings on the sides of the ark; you will use them to carry the ark. ¹⁵ The poles are to remain in the rings of the ark; they are not to be removed from it. ¹⁶ Into the ark you are to put the testimony which I am about to give you.

(ii) ¹⁷ “You are to make a cover for the ark out of pure gold; it is to be three-and-three-quarters feet long and two-and-a-quarter feet high. ¹⁸ You are to make two k’ruvim of gold. Make them of hammered work for the two ends of the ark-cover. ¹⁹ Make one keruv for one end and one keruv for the other end; make the k’ruvim of one piece with the ark-cover at its two ends. ²⁰ The k’ruvim will have their wings spread out above, so that their wings cover the ark, and their faces are toward each other and toward the ark-cover. ²¹ You are to put the ark-cover on top of the ark.

“Inside the ark you will put the testimony that I am about to give you. ²² There I will meet with you. I will speak with you from above the ark-cover, from between the two k’ruvim which are on the ark for the testimony, about all the orders I am giving you for the people of Isra’el.

2 As for me, brothers, when I arrived among you, it was not with surpassing eloquence or wisdom that I came announcing to you the previously concealed truth about God; ² for I had decided that while I was with you I would forget everything except Yeshua the Messiah, and even him only as someone who had been executed on a stake as a criminal. ³ Also I myself was with you as somebody weak, nervous and shaking all over from fear; ⁴ and neither the delivery nor the content of my message relied on compelling words of “wisdom” but on a demonstration of the power of the Spirit, ⁵ so that your trust might not rest on human wisdom but on God’s power.

⁶ Yet there is a wisdom that we are speaking to those who are mature enough for it. But it is not the wisdom of this world or of this world’s leaders, who are in the process of passing away. ⁷ On the contrary, we are communicating a secret wisdom from God which has been hidden until now but which, before history began, God had decreed would bring us glory. ⁸ Not one of this world’s leaders has understood it; because if they had, they would not have executed the Lord from whom this glory flows. ⁹ But, as the Tanakh says,

¹⁰ It is to us, however, that God has revealed these things. How? Through the Spirit. For the Spirit probes all things, even the profoundest depths of God.