Ark of the Covenant

Reconstruction of the ark of the covenant drawn in Egyptian style, reflects the influence of 400 years of bondage in Egypt. The mysterious origin of the ark is seen by contrasting the two accounts of how it was made in the Pentateuch. The more elaborate account of the manufacture and ornamentation of the ark by the craftsman Bezalel appears in Ex 25:10-22; 31:2,7; 35:30-35; 37:1-9. It was planned during Moses’s first sojourn on Sinai and built after the tabernacle specifications had been communicated and completed. The other account is found in Dt 10:1-5. After the sin of the golden calf and the breaking of the original Decalogue tablets, Moses made a plain box of acacia wood as a container to receive the new tables of the law. A very ancient poem, the “Song of the Ark” in Nm 10:35-36, sheds some light on the function of the ark in the wanderings in the wilderness.