Vayak'hel - The Tabernacle & The Messianic Age
The Torah portion of Vayak’hel has quite a few connections to the Messiah. In this Torah portion, we learn about how Shabbat is connected to the second coming. This portion occurs during the festival of Sukkot, which holds a connection to the Messianic Era. We also learn about the building of the Tabernacle, which is connected to the rebuilding of the Temple.
Before Moshe started guiding the people of Israel in the building of the Tabernacle, he reiterated the command of Shabbat, the seventh day of rest after six days of labor. From this we learn that it is more important to observe Shabbat than it is to do something even as sacred as building the Tabernacle.
This alludes to the coming of Messiah and the establishment of his kingdom, which is symbolized by Shabbat. The rabbis explain that the six days of creation allude to six millenia. Each day of the creation story coincides with one thousand years. The creation of man on the sixth day coincides with the arrival of Messiah at the end of the sixth millennium. The seventh day, the day of rest, coincides with the Messianic Era.
When the Messiah comes at the end of the sixth millennium, he will gather up his assembly, establish his kingdom, and institute a thousand year Shabbat. He will also re-establish the Shabbat on the seventh day, and will erase any notions that the Shabbat is on a different day or that the Shabbat is obsolete. In the Messianic Era, everyone in the entire world will observe the Shabbat. (Yalkut Moshiach)
When Moshe, the first redeemer, returned to the people of Israel after going up mount Sinai, he reiterated the commandment of the Shabbat, and delivered the instructions for the building of the Tabernacle.
When Messiah, the last redeemer, returns to the people of Israel, he will follow in the path of Moshe. He will reinstitute the Sabbat and rebuild the Temple.
The prophets predict that, in the Messianic Era, the Temple will be restored as the house of God in Jerusalem, it will be the center of the nations. Maimonides makes the rebuilding of the Temple one of the requirements that the Messiah must accomplish in order to confirm his identity, as Rambam writes in the Mishneh Torah (Hilchot Melachim 11:4), “If he succeeds in all this, builds the Temple, and gathers in the dispersed remnant of Israel, he is definitely the Messiah.”
The Messiah will not build the temple by himself. It says in Exodus Rabbah 40:2:
“You find that when Moshe ascended on high, the Holy One, blessed be He, showed him all the furnishings of the Tabernacle and said, ‘This is what you will make. This is how you will make the menorah, the table, the altar ...’ and so forth with all the work of the Tabernacle. As Moshe prepared to descend, he assumed that he was to personally make the Tabernacle, but the Holy One, blessed be He, said to him, ‘Moshe, I have made you a king. Is it appropriate for a king to do anything for himself? He gives orders and others do the thing for him. Likewise, you must find others and let them do the work.’”
Moshe appointed two craftsmen to oversee the building of the Tabernacle, Bezalel and Oholiab. Solomon appointed Hiram to oversee the construction of the first Temple. The Messiah will appoint others to rebuild the Temple.
Tradition states that Moshe came down the mountain on Yom Kippur, the day of atonement. A couple days after Yom Kippur is Sukkot, the festival of booths. If we follow these events, this means that Moshe oversaw the building of the Tabernacle during the festival of Sukkot.
The construction of the Tabernacle coincides with the construction of the sukkot, or booths, that we dwell in during the festival of Sukkot.
The sukkah (the singular form of Sukkot), is a temporary structure for us to dwell in during Sukkot, to remind us of the sukkot (booths) that the people of Israel dwelled in, when they were living in the wilderness. As it says in Leviticus 23:42-43:
“Ye shall dwell in booths seven days; all that are home-born in Israel shall dwell in booths; that your generations may know that I made the children of Israel to dwell in booths, when I brought them out of the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God.”
The Tabernacle is God’s Sukkah on earth. This explains why Solomon decided to dedicate the Temple to God on Sukkot (1 Kings 8:55). Solomon understood that, by placing his presence in a physical dwelling, God was camping out in a sukkah.
According to Jewish tradition, a person should begin building his Sukkah immediately at the conclusion of Yom Kippur. It says in the Shulchan Aruch, “Those who are zealous immediately begin to build the sukkah after Yom Kippur in order to bring together one mitzvah with another mitzvah.”
Immediately after Moshe came back from the mountain on Yom Kippur, he gave instructions on how to build the Tabernacle. Moshe was like the pious person who started work on the sukkah as soon as Yom Kippur ended.
When the Messiah comes, he will immediately begin rebuilding the Temple after the fateful day of judgement, on Yom Kippur.
Yeshua compared his body to the Temple. It says in John 2:21, that when Yeshua said, “I will raise it up,” “He was speaking of the Temple of his body.” It says in Collosians 2:9 that Yeshua is the living temple, in whom, “All the fullness of God dwells in bodily form.”
Moshe Chaim Luzzato uses a similar analogy, comparing the body of a Tzaddik, a righteous person, to the Temple:
“The holy person who cleaves constantly to God ... Behold a person like this, he himself, is considered to be like the Tabernacle, the Temple, and the altar ... And this is also said regarding the righteous ... Because the Shechinah dwells in them just like it dwelled in the Temple.” (Moshe Chaim Luzzato, Mesillat Yesharim 26)
The talmidim (the apostles) sometimes refer to the followers of Yeshua as the body of the Messiah. If the body of the Messiah is a temple, then by extension, the followers of Yeshua are also a temple. It says in 2 Corinthians 6:19, “We are the temple of the living God.” From this perspective, the construction of the Tabernacle teaches about the building up of the body of Messiah into a spiritual Temple. It says in Ephesians 2:20-22:
“Having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Messiah Yeshua himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, is growing into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you are also being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit.”
The Torah portion of Vayak’hel is connected to the messiah and the Messianic Era. Moshe coming down from the mountain, reiterating the commandment of the Shabbat, and giving instructions on how to build the Tabernacle points towards the coming of Messiah, and how he will re-establish the Shabbat, usher in an era of rest, and rebuild the Temple. The appointed times that were observed during Moshe’s return and his subsequent instructions point towards the Messianic Era and how God dwelling among us, in the Tabernacle or Temple, is equivalent to the temporary dwelling in the Sukkah. Finally, the Tabernacle itself points towards the temple and the body of the Messiah, and us followers of Yeshua.
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