Exodus: The Lord and His PilgrimsSample

The other tent

Whatever do they want another tent for (33:7)? Isn’t the tabernacle in all its glory enough for them? Well, no! They do need another tent – and so do you and I! 

Moses has just spent forty days and nights alone with God (Deut. 9:9). He is so delighted in that divine Presence with him that he says he would prefer to stay in the wilderness rather than go forward to the Promised Land without it (Ex. 33:15)! Very likely he has already experienced in himself something of the personal transformation that is plainly evident after his second forty-day sojourn with the Lord (34:28, 30). At any rate it is for this reason that Moses, literally, ‘used to take a tent and pitch it outside the camp … calling it the “tent of meeting”’ (33:7 NIV 1984). And it is a place to which anyone seeking the Lord ‘used to go’. Public, corporate worship is one thing. By the Lord’s will it is catered for by the tabernacle and its sacrifices. Personal, private time with God is another thing, and it is for this that Moses pitches the second tent. Notice the connection: following the second stay on the mountain (34:28), Moses’ face is shining because ‘he talked with Him [the Lord]’ (v. 29). Moses also speaks with the Lord when he goes to the tent (33:9): it is a place of personal communion with God.

The tabernacle services are at set times, but Moses exercises personal responsibility in going to the tent. 33:8 and 34:34 say ‘whenever’, implying it is whenever Moses decides to or choses to. But whenever he does so, the Lord graciously affirms the situation by coming to meet him and securing the privacy of the meeting (33:9). 34:34 says Moses goes in to speak with the Lord, but when he comes out he brings with him what the Lord had said to him. It is a real meeting: Moses desires it, and the Lord makes it effective. 

Now do you see why they needed a second tent, and why I say that you and I need one too? We each need a place of private meeting with God – just him and me. For us, of course, no tent is needed – just a simple turning to God. The angel, the Lord Jesus, welcomes us into his tent and makes room for us (Ps. 34:7).

Reflection

May we echo these words: ‘Like Jesus, like Jesus; I want to be like Jesus.’ (Fanny Crosby, ‘In truth and grace I want to grow’.) Follow his example in Isaiah 50:4 and Mark 1:35. (Well, perhaps do not rise ‘before daylight’, but say fifteen minutes before you usually get up!)