Exodus 35-40

Let's finish Exodus, so we never, ever have to read it again, mmkay?

The remainder of this book is so repetitive, boring and horrible that I can hardly believe I survived to tell about it. And with that sentence, you know all you need to know about the rest of Exodus. But because I'm so gosh darned thorough, here are some highlights from Exodus 35-40:

• Now that God has given us his terrific list of commandments, let's take him offerings, including gold, silver, brass, shittim wood, dyed rams' skin, incense, oil and onyx stones. I try to peel away the layers of this mind numbingly detailed ritual to find what's at the heart of it, and guess what? Nothing is there. OK, I didn't try that hard. I was too busy wishing I was done with this stupid book.
• Those with willing hearts, in whom the Lord put wisdom and understanding, will bring offerings for the Lord. What in the hell does God need with this stuff anyway? 
• And then there's the detail about the tabernacle. GAH! I wanted to gouge my eyes out reading this. Linen curtains of cubits and more cubits. Loops of fifty made he. Fifty taches of gold, curtains of goat hair, rams' skin dyed red, and badger skin. Sockets of silver and brass, bars of shittim wood, and purple and scarlet needlework. Gold overlay, gold rings, gold crowns, gold candlesticks, and gold cherubs beaten out of one piece made he them, on the two ends of the mercy seat. And he made his seven lamps, and his snuffers, and his snuffdishes of pure gold.
• Your altar needs pots and basins and fire pans and flesh hooks and shovels for the numerous burnt offerings you're going to have. You'll need to butcher animal after animal to make things right with God. What a gory, bloody place this tabernacle must have been. 
• The brass of the offering is seventy talents, and two thousand and four hundred shekels. I'm stating the obvious here.
• The ministers wear fancy outfits in the tabernacle. Girding thyselves with girdles. Wearing bonnets, rings of gold and wreathen chains fastened in the ouches (where are the ouches again? I forget). And an ephod bedazzled with onyx, jasper, amethyst, agate, carbuncle, sardius, emerald and gold in their enclosings. If all this sounds familiar, it's because we already read this same verbose description earlier in Exodus. Cut to the chase, God. Jesus Christ.
• God tells Moses to gather the congregation in the tabernacle on the first of the month. Light the candles, burn the incense, and slaughter some animals for the Lord your God.
• Aaron and his sons are the ministers. To prepare for the altar ceremony (which I guess you could call church?), they don their fancy boy clothes, dot themselves with oil and wash their feet. Then God will show up at the tabernacle as a cloud by day and fire by night.

Thank God we have finished Exodus. I was beginning to think it would never happen, but I just put my trust in God and it happened. That's the power of prayer.