Read the Introduction
Volume I of Exodus closed at the foot of the mountain with the counsel of Jethro and the appointment of able men over thousands, over hundreds, over fifties, and over tens. The going out was finished, the brick pits and the crown that held the people were behind them, and the record had carried them to the place the Grantor swore to bring them to. This volume begins on that ground. It runs from the nineteenth chapter of Exodus through the fortieth, and its argument is the constitution rather than the departure: the words given, the judgments that administer them, the blood that seals them, and the house built to hold the presence that gave them.
The people arrive at Sinai in the third month and hear the terms proposed to them: a peculiar treasure, a kingdom of priests, a holy nation, on the condition of hearing His voice and keeping His covenant, and the answer comes back in one voice, that all the LORD hath spoken they will do. The mount burns, bounds are set about it, and the Ten Words are spoken in the hearing of the whole assembly and written by the hand of the Grantor upon tables of stone. The judgments follow, and they are not commentary. They carry the constitution into daily administration: the servant and the seventh year of release, the goring ox and the open pit, restitution for the stolen thing, the keeper of the deposit, the borrower and the hired man, the true witness and the false one, the stranger, the widow, and the fatherless, the year of rest and the angel of the way. The covenant is then ratified in blood, the book read in the audience of the people, the blood sprinkled upon the altar and upon the people, and the elders going up to eat and to drink before the God of Israel. The pattern of the dwelling is shown in the mount, and the ark, the mercy seat, the table, the candlestick, the curtains, the boards, the altar, the court, and the garments of the priesthood are given to the measure that was given, with Bezaleel and Aholiab named to the work. The breach comes while Moses tarries: the golden calf, the tables broken, the presence withdrawn to a tent pitched without the camp, and the intercession that asks to be shown the glory. Then the second tables are hewn on the same terms as the first, the freewill offering comes in from every willing heart, the work is wrought to the pattern, and the tabernacle is raised and anointed and filled. The volume closes with the cloud covering the tent of meeting and the glory of the LORD taking possession of the house that hands had built to the measure shown in the mount.
The doctrine carried through these chapters is the law of the constituted venue. A constitution open to amendment by the governed is not a constitution but a policy, and the tables cut by the hand of the Grantor are the answer to every claim that the terms may be renegotiated by the party living under them. The blood is the seal. An instrument that is read aloud and then sprinkled is an instrument executed, and the sprinkling binds the altar and the people to the same words at the same hour. The judgments are the working code that keeps the seal from becoming a formality, so that every keeper, every borrower, every witness, and every servant stands inside a rule with a remedy attached and a court that can hear it. The dwelling is the venue itself, built to a specification that was not Moses's to alter, administered by men consecrated to the service, approached through an altar and a laver, and presided over by the presence that filled it the day the work was finished.
Read the two volumes as one argument and the order is exact. Volume I shows a people taken out of a foreign jurisdiction by a claim of the Name. Volume II shows those same people given their own words, their own courts, their own seal, and their own house, so that the law of the Most High has a place on the earth from which to preside. The judgments in these chapters are also the direct ancestors of the law of bailment and trust: the property of a neighbor delivered to a keeper, the keeper found with the thing in his hand, the borrower who must make the loss good, the pledge taken and returned before the sun goes down. Genesis taught the anatomy of a trust, Volume I executed the delivery of the estate, and this volume constitutes the venue in which the estate is governed.
And the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle. And Moses was not able to enter into the tent of meeting, because the cloud abode thereon, and the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle.
Exodus 40:34-35
The scripture is quoted whole and the doctrine is named as doctrine wherever it goes beyond the text, so that what is written may be weighed by whoever holds the book.