Half Measures

Half Measures September 15, 2014

The Hebrew word “half” (chetziy) is used over 120 times in the Old Testament. Nearly half of the uses are in two books, Exodus (20x) and Joshua (29x). The word is used another 14x in Chronicles, and 13 more in Nehemiah. 

In Exodus, it is mostly used in describing dimensions. Most of the uses in Joshua and Chronicles refer to the half-tribe of Manasseh. The uses in Nehemiah are intriguing, since they have to do with districts of the city of Jerusalem (e.g., 3:9, 12, 16). The fact that the city is divided into half-sections may be an indicator of the expansion of holiness beyond the temple to the city. 

We’ll leave that aside for the moment, and concentrate here on the data in the tabernacle texts in Exodus. This is primarily an attempt to sum up the data. I make a few gestures at explanation, but they are no more than, probably less than, gestures.

Nearly all the uses in Exodus refer to measurements of sacred furnishings for the tabernacle. The tabernacle curtains themselves are measured in full cubits (cf. Exodus 26:2, 6), and the height of the wall boards is an even ten cubits. The altars also use whole-number proportions. The bronze altar is 5 x 5 x 3 cubits (27:1); the golden altar is 1 x 1 x 2 (30:1). 

Two items of furniture, though, use half-cubit measures. All the dimensions of the ark include half-cubits (2 1/2 long, 1 1/2 wide, 1 1/2 high, 25:10; 37:1). Those dimensions are half of the dimensions of the bronze altar; each face of the altar is 5 x 3 cubits, and each face of the ark is 2 1/2 x 1 1/2 cubits. The top of the table is a clean 2 x 1 cubits, but it is 1 1/2 cubits high (25:23; 37:10), again half the height of the bronze altar. 

Other half measurements also appear in the tabernacle description. The curtain is too long, so half of it has to lap over at the back of the tabernacle (26:12). Each board of the tabernacle walls is ten cubits call, 1 1/2 wide (26:16). In addition, there is a bronze grill inside the shell of the altar, which is “half” up on the altar (27:5; 38:4). Since the altar is a holy mountain, a division halfway up makes sense; like Moses on Sinai, the sacrificial animal is placed at the head of the altar, above the halfway point, where the cloud of God is. We’ll return to this point below.

It’s worth noting that half-measurements are difficult in themselves. You can rough measure a “cubit” or “cubit and a span” with a forearm and hand. You can’t measure a half-cubit with any accuracy using only your body. It requires an artificial standard. Perhaps, with the table and the ark, we move from human to divine realms; the altars represent people, but the table and the ark, which cannot be measured by human bodies, belong to Yahweh’s realm.

The grouping of furnishings that emerges from this is unusual. Working straight from the court to the most holy place, you’d move from the whole-cubit bronze altar past the whole-cubit golden altar to an ark that includes half-cubit measurements. When we classify by half-measurements, the two altars are in one group, and the table and the ark in the other. Directionally, the even-cubit furnishings are east (bronze altar east of the tabernacle, golden altar east of the veil), the half-cubit furnishings are north (table) and west (ark).

The analysis in the previous paragraph seems to prevent us from seeing half-measurements as indicative of a more intense state of holiness. If only the ark had half-measures, it would work. But the golden altar, set right in front of the veil and even treated (in Hebrews) as part of the furniture of the most holy place, is holier than the table, and yet its dimensions are all in whole numbers.

So what can we say? One effect of these half-measures is to create third-proportions in various part of the tabernacle. The boards are 6 2/3 longer than they are wide, and the table top is twice as long as it is wide, but it is 1 1/3 long as it is high. The length of the ark is 1 2/3 the breadth and height, which is, of course, the same as the proportion between the length and height of each face of the bronze altar. 

It would be nice if this were phi, the “golden proportion,” but it’s not (it’s 1.618). Still, there might be something to the proportions: If you work out the proportions of successive numbers in the Fibonacci sequence, it hovers around the golden mean after the first ten numbers . The fifth in that sequence is 1.666 (5:3). In any case, when we note these proportions, the grouping of tabernacle furniture comes out differently: Altar and ark are linked by having similar proportions, while the table and golden altar are connected because of their whole-number measurements.

We can venture this: the grill of the bronze altar is “halfway” up the inside of the altar, that is, 1 1/2 cubits off the ground. The table is 1 1/2 cubits tall; if we imagine fitting the table into the altar, it would extend from the grill to the top. The top of the altar and the tabletop thus can be imagined as corresponding to one another. An animal that goes onto the altar grill ascends to the peak, where the twelve tribes of Israel are spread out as bread. Alternatively, we can imagine the same thing with the ark: insert the ark into the bronze altar, and it rests on the grill, with the cherubim wings spreading out above, forming the throne of Yahweh. An animal placed on the grill is “halfway” up the mountain already, but, turned to smoke, can ascend the other 1 1/2 cubits to the presence of God, to join Yahweh on His throne.


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