Contract with God aka The Moses Expedition

37

The Bible says: ‘And they shall make an Ark of shittim wood: two cubits and a half shall be the length thereof, and a cubit and a half the breadth thereof, and a cubit and a half the height thereof. And thou shalt overlay it with pure gold, within and without shalt thou overlay it, and thou shalt make upon it a crown of gold round about. And thou shalt cast four rings of gold for it, and put them in the four corners thereof; and two rings shall be in the one side of it, and two rings in the other side of it. And thou shalt make staves of shittim wood, and overlay them with gold. And thou shalt put the staves into the rings by the sides of the Ark, that the Ark may be borne with them.’

I’ll apply the measurements of the regular cubit. I know I’ll be criticised because few scholars do; they rely on the Egyptian cubit and the ‘sacred’ cubit, which are much more glamorous. But I’m right.

This is what we know for sure about the Ark:

• Year of construction: 1453 BC at the foot of Mount Sinai.

• 44 inches long

• 25 inches wide

• 25 inches high

• 84-gallon capacity

• 600 pounds in weight

There are people who would suggest that the weight of the Ark was greater, around 1,100 pounds. Additionally, there is an idiot who dared to insist that the Ark weighed more than a ton. That is crazy. And they call themselves experts. They love to add the weight of the Ark itself. Poor idiots. They don’t realise that gold, even though it is heavy, is too soft. The rings could not have supported such weight, nor would the wooden poles have been long enough for more than four men to carry it comfortably.

Gold is a very soft metal. Last year I saw a whole room covered in thin sheets of gold made from one good-sized coin, following methods dating back to the Bronze Age. The Jews were skilled crafts-men, and did not have great amounts of gold in the desert, nor would they have burdened themselves with such a great weight that they left themselves vulnerable to their enemies. No, they would have used a small amount of gold and created thin sheets of it to cover the wood. Shittim wood, or acacia, is a solid wood that could last centuries without being damaged, especially if it was covered by a thin layer of metal that did not rust and was indifferent to the effects of time. It was an object built for eternity. How could it be otherwise, since it was the Timeless One who gave the instructions?