Week 19 2 Chronicles
When Solomon became king one of the first things he did was to call together his leaders of state. The chronicler says: then Solomon led the entire assembly to the hill at Gibeon where God’s Tabernacle was located. This was the Tabernacle that Moses…had constructed in the wilderness. David had already moved the Ark of God…to the special tent he had prepared for it in Jerusalem. But the bronze altar…was still at Gibeon in front of the Tabernacle of the Lord.
Reading today I realized I’d missed out on this completely. I had no idea that the Tabernacle and the altar were currently in Gibeon – as far as that goes I didn’t know where Gibeon was. But the old Exodus Tabernacle along with Bezalel’s bronze altar were in the town of Gibeon (I checked a map – it’s about ten kilometres northwest of Jerusalem).
So even though the ark of the covenant was in Jerusalem Solomon went to Gibeon to offer sacrifices at the Tabernacle. And that’s where the Lord met Solomon.
I flipped back to the Kings’ story of Solomon – years later – when he was dedicating his brand new temple: then the priests and Levites took the Ark of the Lord, along with the Tabernacle and all its sacred utensils, and carried them up to the Temple.
So the Tabernacle ended up in the Temple even though by then the Temple had replaced it.
Note: quotes from 2 Chronicles 1:3-5 & 1 Kings 8:4 (NLT)