The Tabernacle Manual: Exodus 25:1–31:18 in Light of the Cuneiform Procedural Genre

The end of the book of Exodus centers on the construction of the tabernacle, both the divine commands and the descriptive fulfillment. While several studies have attempted to explain the form and function of the descriptive fulfillment, the form-critical features of the divine commands have eluded explanation. In this article, I present a form-critical reanalysis of the tabernacle instructions, suggesting that the most salient features of the instructions (second-person directives, technical vocabulary, and descriptive nonrestrictive clauses) accord well with the features of the procedural genre known from Akkadian literature. I compare grammatical, lexical, and pragmatic aspects of the tabernacle instructions to the central features of a variety of "instruction manuals," which include glassmaking and perfume-production manuals. I argue that the similarities between the tabernacle instructions and these manuals from Mesopotamia evidence a shared genre background, making the tabernacle instructions a tabernacle "manual" of sorts. The consistency in features additionally presents new evidence for the formal unity of a broad core of texts throughout Exod 25:1–30:10, shedding new light on various segments of the text broadly considered secondary (29:10–46; 30:1–10, 11–17, 23–38; and 31:2–6). The conclusion of the study presents avenues for future inquiry.