Tent

The tent is one of scripture's earliest dwellings and one of its longest-running figures. It begins as the literal shelter of the line that "dwell in tents and [have] cattle" (Gen 4:20), shapes the patriarchal life of Abram, Isaac, and Jacob, becomes the form of Yahweh's own sanctuary among Israel, and survives in the New Testament and Diognetus as a way of speaking about the body in which the soul lives and the foreign land in which the people of God sojourn. Its movement runs from a fabric house pegged into the ground to a heavenly building "not made with hands" (2 Cor 5:1).

The Patriarchal Tent

The trade of tent-dwelling is set in scripture's earliest genealogy. Adah's son Jabal "was the father of such as dwell in tents and [have] cattle" (Gen 4:20). The patriarchs are then introduced living that life. Abram, moving south from the highlands, "removed from there to the mountain on the east of Beth-el, and pitched his tent, having Beth-el on the west, and Ai on the east: and there he built an altar to [the Speech of] Yahweh, and called on the name of [the Speech of] Yahweh" (Gen 12:8). Later he "moved his tent, and came and dwelt by the oaks of Mamre, which are in Hebron, and built there an altar to [the Speech of] Yahweh" (Gen 13:18). It is at the door of that same tent that Yahweh appears: "And [the Speech of] Yahweh appeared to him by the oaks of Mamre, as he sat in the tent door in the heat of the day" (Gen 18:1).

The next generations carry on the same form of life. Isaac "departed there, and encamped in the valley of Gerar, and dwelt there" (Gen 26:17), and Jacob, fleeing Laban, "had pitched his tent in the mountain: and Laban with his brothers encamped in the mountain of Gilead" (Gen 31:25). The tent is also a domestic interior, shared between generations: when Isaac took Rebekah for his wife he "brought her into his mother Sarah's tent, and took Rebekah, and she became his wife. And he loved her. And Isaac was comforted after his mother's death" (Gen 24:67). It is not an honored interior in every story — Noah, in the first tent scripture names, "drank of the wine, and was drunk. And he was uncovered inside his tent" (Gen 9:21).

The tent-dwelling life continues into Israel's settled period as the ordinary mode for whole tribes and peoples. After Yahweh delivered Israel from Aram in the days of Jehoahaz, "the sons of Israel dwelt in their tents as formerly" (2 Kings 13:5). The Rechabites' charter is the same form of life as a vow of fidelity: "neither will you⁺ build house, nor sow seed, nor plant vineyard, nor have any; but all your⁺ days you⁺ will dwell in tents; that you⁺ may live many days in the land in which you⁺ sojourn" (Jer 35:7). And the Midianite invasion is described in the same vocabulary, magnified into a swarm: "they came up with their cattle and their tents; they came in as locusts for multitude; both they and their camels were without number: and they came into the land to destroy it" (Judg 6:5). The same vocabulary names other peoples — Habakkuk sees "the tents of Cushan in affliction; The curtains of the land of Midian trembled" (Hab 3:7), and Isaiah's oracle against Babylon promises that the city "will never be inhabited, neither will it be stayed in from generation to generation: neither will the Arabian pitch tent there; neither will shepherds make their flocks to lie down there" (Isa 13:20).

The shepherd's tent in particular gives Hebrew prophecy two of its sharpest images. Hezekiah, sick to death, sees his life leaving him as a herdsman strikes camp: "My dwelling is removed, and is carried away from me as a shepherd's tent: I have rolled up, like a weaver, my life; he will cut me off from the loom: From day even to night you will make an end of me" (Isa 38:12). Jeremiah uses the same gesture for the gathering of an army around Jerusalem: "Shepherds with their flocks will come to her; they will pitch their tents against her round about; they will shepherd every one in his place" (Jer 6:3).

The Tent in War and Treachery

The tent is also a setting for the violence and dissent of Israel's wars. After the rout of Ai, the stolen mantle is found by Joshua's messengers: "they ran to the tent; and, look, it was hid in his tent, and the silver under it" (Josh 7:22). Sisera's flight from Barak ends in another tent. Fleeing on foot, "Sisera fled away on his feet to the tent of Jael the wife of Heber the Kenite; for there was peace between Jabin the king of Hazor and the house of Heber the Kenite" (Judg 4:17). It is by an instrument of the tent itself that he is killed: "Then Jael Heber's wife took a tent-pin, and took a hammer in her hand, and went softly to him, and struck the pin into his temples, and it pierced through into the ground; for he was in a deep sleep; so he swooned and died" (Judg 4:21). When Barak comes up he sees "that Sisera lay dead, and the tent-pin was in his temples" (Judg 4:22).

The cry that summons Israel to disperse from a king is also given in the language of tents. Sheba's revolt against David begins, "We have no portion in David, neither do we have inheritance in the son of Jesse: every man to his tents, O Israel" (2 Sam 20:1). The same words divide the kingdom under Rehoboam: "What portion do we have in David? Neither do we have inheritance in the son of Jesse: to your⁺ tents, O Israel: now see to your own house, David. So Israel departed to their tents" (1 Kings 12:16). In the war narratives of 1 Maccabees the tent is again the camp: "Now Judas had pitched his tents in Elasa, and three thousand chosen men with him" (1 Macc 9:5); and "they pitched their tents near Joppa, but they shut him out of the city: because a garrison of Apollonius was in Joppa, and he laid siege to it" (1 Macc 10:75).

Sirach takes the figure in another direction, into the pursuit of wisdom — the seeker is shown as a man pitching his tent against her wall. Of the one who pursues her Sirach says, "Who encamps round about her house; And then brings his tent pegs into her wall. And stretches out his tent next to her; And then stays a good neighbor" (Sir 14:24-25).

The Tent of Meeting

The fabric tent becomes the form of Yahweh's own dwelling among Israel. The instruction is given at Sinai: "let them make me a sanctuary, that I may stay among them" (Ex 25:8). The construction is described in detail: "Moreover you will make the tabernacle with ten curtains; of fine twined linen, and blue, and purple, and scarlet, with cherubim the work of the skillful workman you will make them" (Ex 26:1). When the work was finished, "Thus was finished all the work of the tabernacle of the tent of meeting: and the sons of Israel did according to all that Yahweh commanded Moses; so they did" (Ex 39:32). At its dedication "the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of Yahweh filled the tabernacle" (Ex 40:34).

The tent is portable by design. It moves with the people: "when the tabernacle sets forward, the Levites will take it down; and when the tabernacle is to be pitched, the Levites will set it up: and the stranger who comes near will be put to death" (Num 1:51). It travels in formation: "Then the tent of meeting will set forward, with the camp of the Levites in the midst of the camps: as they encamp, so they will set forward, every man in his place, by their standards" (Num 2:17). After the conquest the moving sanctuary settles at Shiloh: "And the whole congregation of the sons of Israel assembled themselves together at Shiloh, and caused the tent of meeting to stay there: and the land was subdued before them" (Josh 18:1). Hannah's vow belongs to that Shiloh sanctuary. "Hannah rose up after they had eaten in Shiloh, and after they had drank. Now Eli the priest was sitting on his seat by the door-post of the temple of Yahweh" (1 Sam 1:9), and there she vowed: "O Yahweh of hosts, if you will indeed look at the affliction of your slave, and remember me, and not forget your slave, but will give to your slave a man-child, then I will give him to Yahweh all the days of his life, and no razor will come upon his head" (1 Sam 1:11).

In the divided kingdom the older tent persists alongside the temple. Solomon's men "brought up the ark of Yahweh, and the tent of meeting, and all the holy vessels that were in the Tent; even these the priests and the Levites brought up" (1 Kings 8:4). The chronicler remembers it at Gibeon: "the tabernacle of Yahweh, which Moses made in the wilderness, and the altar of burnt-offering, were at that time in the high place at Gibeon" (1 Chr 21:29); "Solomon, and all the assembly with him, went to the high place that was at Gibeon; for there was the tent of meeting of God, which Moses the slave of Yahweh had made in the wilderness" (2 Chr 1:3). Sirach's personified Wisdom claims the same locus as her own ministry: "In the holy tabernacle I ministered before him, Moreover, in Zion I was established" (Sir 24:10).

The figure is taken up in Hebrews and applied to Christ's priesthood: "Christ having come [as] high priest of the good things that have come, through the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this creation" (Heb 9:11).

The Sojourner's Tent

The patriarchal tent is, on its own terms, a sign that the dwellers do not yet possess what they have been promised. Hebrews names the form of life and reads it that way. By faith Abraham "became a sojourner in the land of promise, as in a [land] not his own, dwelling in tents, with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise: for he looked for the city which has the foundations, whose craftsman and builder is God" (Heb 11:9-10). The summary of the same chapter spreads the figure over the patriarchs as a class: "These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth" (Heb 11:13).

The same self-understanding speaks in earlier voices. Jacob's report to Pharaoh is given in the same vocabulary: "The days of the years of my pilgrimage are a hundred and thirty years: few and evil have been the days of the years of my life, and they haven't attained to the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their pilgrimage" (Gen 47:9). David's prayer at the offering for the temple uses it of the whole nation: "we are strangers before you, and sojourners, as all our fathers were: our days on the earth are as a shadow, and there is no hope [to remain on the earth]" (1 Chr 29:15). Peter writes the same to a scattered church: "Beloved, I urge you⁺ as sojourners and pilgrims, to abstain from fleshly desires, which war against the soul" (1 Pet 2:11). Diognetus draws the figure into the daily life of Christians among their neighbors: "They dwell in their own countries, but as sojourners; they partake of all things as citizens, and endure all things as strangers; every foreign land is their country, and every country a foreign land" (Diog 5:5).

The Tent of the Body

The figure makes its last move from the moving sanctuary outward to the body itself. Paul, writing of resurrection hope, calls the body a tabernacle and contrasts it with the building God has prepared: "For we know that if the earthly house of our tabernacle is dissolved, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal, in the heavens. For truly in this we groan, longing to be clothed on with our habitation which is from heaven: if so be that being unclothed we will not be found naked. For indeed we who are in this tabernacle groan, being burdened; not that we want to be unclothed, but that we want to be clothed, that what is mortal may be swallowed up of life" (2 Cor 5:1-4).

Peter speaks of his own death in the same vocabulary, with the matter-of-factness of a man who knows the camp will be struck: "And I think it right, as long as I am in this tabernacle, to stir you⁺ up by putting you⁺ in remembrance; knowing that the putting off of my tabernacle comes swiftly, even as our Lord Jesus Christ signified to me" (2 Pet 1:13-14).

Diognetus brings the body-figure and the sojourner-figure together. "The immortal soul dwells in a mortal tabernacle; and Christians sojourn among corruptible things, looking for incorruption in the heavens" (Diog 6:8); "They dwell on earth, but have citizenship in heaven" (Diog 5:9). The line that began with Jabal pitching the first tent, ran through the patriarchal sojourn and the moving sanctuary at Shiloh, and is finished here: the body itself is a tent, and the people who live in it are a people on the move.