And on the lampstand there shall be four cups shaped like almond blossoms with buds and petals.
The lampstand was solid gold, not hollow, and magnificently wrought with ornamental knops and flowers, but far more than decoration, it spoke truth. The tabernacle had no windows because that old covenant dwelt in darkness; the sun of righteousness had not yet risen. Yet God did not leave them in silence: His Word was their lamp, the prophets were branches spreading its light through the ages. We have the same light still, though the world remains a dark place without it.
AI summary
Commenting on Exodus 25:31-40
Their knops and their branches shall be of the same,.... Of the same metal, gold, and of same mass: all of it shall be one beaten work of pure gold not made in parts, and then put and soldered together, but the whole candlestick in all its parts and branches were to be beaten out of one piece of gold.
The candlestick issued whole from a single mass of beaten gold: its pedestal, its hollow stem rising upward, its cups shaped like flower calyxes, its knobs round and polished, its petals bursting open, all one unified work, nothing added, nothing soldered. The form itself declares that whatever branches forth from the true stem must proceed organically from it, or it is not the Lord's handiwork.
AI summary
Commenting on Exodus 25:31-40