If you have Google nearby (and let’s face it—who doesn’t these days?), do a quick search for the layout of the Israelite camp. I’ll wait.
What did you notice? It doesn’t really matter what picture you actually looked at, what you most likely saw was the nation of Israel, arranged by tribe, in either a big square or a cross.
And what was at the center of that square or cross? The Tabernacle of God.
The significance of this should hit you pretty quick. At the core of Israel’s religious, social, economic, and cultural life is the worship of Jehovah. He is roughly the same distance from each of the tribes—a literal representation of God’s promise that He is not far from each one of us (Psalm 145:18; Acts 17:27).
Most Jewish commentators agree that this is the central purpose (no pun intended). God’s desire for the Tabernacle was so that He could “dwell among His people” (Exodus 25:8), so this arrangement fulfills this goal.
There are others that argue for a more practical purpose to this setup, such as the need to provide an equidistant path to the Tabernacle for every tribe. No one walks too far. Everyone could get there on the Sabbath without breaking the commandment to not work.
But think about what keeping God at the center meant for the individual tribes. At this point in their history, Israel had virtually no common identity. They were less than two years removed from being slaves and had almost no understanding of who God was or His authority.
With God in the middle of the camp, they were never too far from seeing the one thing that united all of them. They weren’t just the Simeonites and the Gadites—they were Israelites. They were God’s people first, and then members of their tribe second.
We treat America the same way. The city of Greenville (where I live) just erected an enormous American flag right next to the major highway that went through town. It caused a not-so-minor upheaval with some in the town who felt it was an exorbitant expense.
Personally, I love it. We can almost see it from our house, but we can certainly see it from just about any point inside town.
When you see something like that, you’re reminded of who you are as a nation. We’re not just Texans or people from Greenville or a resident from a sub-community. Before all that, we’re an American. In these turbulent times, that’s an idea worth remembering.
The Tabernacle served a similar purpose for Israel. They came from tribes and families and may be wandering around in the middle of a desert that few of them had ever even seen before, but they were God’s people before any of that.
And if they ever forgot it, all they had to do was look at the Tabernacle. Fortunately for them, it was erected right in the middle of everything.
