Bible exposition by a quilter

I felt challenged a little while ago to get back into a more disciplined approach to reading my Bible. Sometimes I like to study a particular subject. Too often I start reading and quit....

Anyway, I heard someone explaining about a certain approach to reading through the Bible which involves readings so many chapters a day. I liked that idea, and decided to start in Exodus because I have read Genesis a bunch of times. That is partly because I like stories and Genesis has a good portion of it that is stories. Also, it is the first book of the Bible, and in past I have started reading and then would get bogged down maybe about the middle of Exodus or Leviticus.

So I started this time in Exodus. Exodus starts out talking about Moses and quickly goes from his childhood to his adulthood and the comes the time when God tells him to go deliver the Israelites in Egypt when he was 80 year old. After that ... they have left Egypt and they are wandering in the wilderness. Then God begins to show Moses things about how to follow Him. Moses receives the 10 commandments.

And then Moses gets instructions from God about making the tabernacle for sacrifices.... I was noticing reading it this time about the colors. There's a lot of repetition, you see the same wording repeated from paragraph to paragraph and chapter to chapter. I'm not sure why it is so repetitive, ... it's sort of like poetry, maybe. Maybe it was passed down by oral recitation and that made it easier to remember.

So, I kept thinking about the colors. Since I make quilts, I just love going to the fabric store and looking at fabrics. I also did weaving at one time in my life. So I have some idea of what is involved in creating the fabrics. It's natural, I guess then, that I should pay attention to this mentions of fabrics and colors, and the combinations of colors. I wondered how the colors mentioned would look in a quilt.

The colors of the veils in the tabernacle were blue, purple and scarlet. There were also lots of gold and silver and bronze things around. The priest's garments had different colored stones (which were to represent the 12 tribes of Israel). And there was a top to the tabernacle that was made with ram's skin dyed red and porpoise skin. I have heard someone say that porpoise skin is waterproof.

Also, I have seen artistic renderings of what the tabernacle might have looked like, and somehow I had gotten in my mind the idea that the tabernacle didn't have a top. And that the animal sacrifices happened somewhere inside the tabernacle--but they were done outside. It's hard for me to picture it all.

As for the colors, at first I was thinking about the colors just being beautiful. Then I started thinking about them as representing the blood sacrifice. I think that is what is signified by the blue, purple and scarlet veils, and the red covering. The gold and different gems seems to speak of purity and of value.

Now I am reading Leviticus. It goes into more detail about doing the sacrifices. It was a bloody business being a priest. Already, to start with in Exodus they have been sprinkled with blood. That seems kind of gross.... Now they have all these animal parts and blood to deal with. Sacrifices, worship, and holiness, that is what Leviticus seems to be about.