ויהי ביום כלות משה, “It was on the day that Moses completed, etc.” Nachmanides writes that the meaning of the word כלות, completing, as opposed to הקים erecting, is to tell us that on the first day when the Tabernacle was put up to become functional, i.e. on the seventh day of the מילואים, the consecration rites, Moses did not dismantle the Tabernacle as he had done on the previous days. Whereas G’d had spoken to Moses on the first of those seven days from inside the Tabernacle and He communicated to him all the chapters of the Torah beginning with the first chapter of Leviticus. He issued all the laws about the sacrifices, both animal and meal offerings. On the eighth day of the consecration rites, i.e. after their conclusion, G’d communicated to Moses the legislation about what may and may not be eaten (Leviticus chapter 11) All these laws contain some aspects of the legislation pertaining to sacrificial offerings, the maintenance of the Tabernacle, and the service to be performed in it by the priests. Having dealt with these aspects, the Torah proceeds to describe the donations of the people and the princes that enabled the Tabernacle to have been erected. The donations of the princes were brought between the 8th and the 19th day of Nissan.

ואת המזבח ואת כל כליו, “and the altar and all its appurtenances.” Conceptually, these words belong to the beginning of our verse, i.e. להקים, Moses did not only erect the Tabernacle on that day but also the altar etc., as he had been doing for the previous seven days. He also performed the anointing, etc. all on that day.

וימשחם ויקדש אותם, “He anointed them and sanctified them.” Nachmanides, quoting Ibn Ezra writes that the anointing was done with the special oil for anointing described in Exodus chapter 30, whereas the “sanctification” was accomplished by taking the blood from the sin offering as we read in Leviticus 8,15ויחטא את המזבח ואת הדם יצק אל יסוד המזבח ויחטאהו לכפר עליו, “he purified the Altar; he poured the remaining blood upon the base of the Altar and he sanctified it to provide atonement for it.” Nachmanides disagrees with Ibn Ezra, basing himself on similar language used by the Torah when describing the sanctification of the Tabernacle, and at that sanctification there certainly was no blood involved. (Compare our verse above)

ויביאו את קרבנם, “they brought their offering, etc.” Nachmanides, in justifying the Torah’s referring to the wagons presented by the princes as קרבן, a sacrificial offering, writes that seeing that these wagons were an indispensable part of the entire process known as service involving sacrificial offerings, claims that their description is קרבן are quite correct. He cites as proof for his approach Numbers 31,50 ונקרב את קרבן ה' איש אשר מצא כלי זהב וגו', “we have brought an offering each man who has found golden vessels [in the loot of the war against the Midianites. Ed.] There too the term קרבן, is applied to man-made items. The gold in question was brought as a gift to the Temple treasury. It appears that what motivated the princes to bring the wagons was that they could not imagine that the Levites would be able to carry all these heavy beams on their shoulders, nor that they would be able to carry the heavy silver sockets of each of those beams. They therefore brought these wagons without their having been requested. It was customary in those days that Royalty and similarly highly placed individuals would transport their belongings on wagons. It is also possible to interpret the words ויביאו את קרבנם לפני ה' שש עגלות צב וגו', to mean that the six wagons transported the sacrificial offerings of the princes, whereas the 12 oxen transported the wagons. The oxen and wagons came to a halt before the entrance of the Tabernacle, and then G’d commanded Moses to also accept the oxen and the wagons from them as gifts for the Temple treasury. As a result, both the oxen and the wagons now became לעבוד את עבודת המשכן “tools to perform the service connected with the work connected with the Tabernacle.” Subsequently, the princes took their respective sacrificial offerings and presented them in front of the Altar. They had meant originally to all present all their offerings on that very day. At this point in time, G’d told Moses that they were to present these offerings one prince at a time, one day at a time. This is why there was no need for the Torah to write קח מאתם, “accept it from them,” in connection with the princes’ respective sacrificial offerings. Why would Moses not accept these offerings until G’d had given him specific instructions to accept them? What they had been doing was no more than commonplace; however, in connection with the oxen [too old for the Altar as animal sacrifices, Ed.] as well as for the wagons Moses did have to have special instructions to accept these also. It is a norm in our holy tongue to describe even what is being transported on the wagons as being a part of the wagons, similar to when the prophet in Kings I 18,19 speaks of אוכלי שולחן איזבל, which, of course does not mean that “people were eating Izzevel’s table,” but that “people were eating food at Izzevel’s table.” It is possible that the meaning of the word צב in our context is: “loaded with,” as in Isaiah 66,20 where these “covered wagons“ are understood as being loaded with many travelers each. In that case the Torah describes the six wagons as fully loaded with the various sacrificial offerings of the princes.

נחשון בן עמינדב למטה יהודה, “Nachshon, son of Aminadav, of the tribe of Yehudah.” It is noteworthy that the title of these princes, i.e. נשיא, is mentioned with all of them except with the prince of Yehudah. This was a lesson to the other princes to be humble and not to introduce themselves with their title when asked who they were. A classic example is when Yehudah begs Joseph to accept him as a slave instead of his brother Binyamin, and he says ישב נא עבדך תחת הנער עבד לאדוני, “let your servant take the place of the lad as your servant, my lord.” (Genesis 44,33) We find similarly that David is described as דוד הקטן Samuel I 17,14, [although as opposed to his older brothers he had already been the king’s court musician. Ed.]

וקרבנו, “and his offering, etc.” At this point the Torah wrote an apparently superfluous letter ו at the beginning of the word וקרבנו, seeing Nachshon was the first one of the princes to offer his קרבן, so that a prefix connecting it to something previous appears totally uncalled for. Similarly, we find an uncharacteristic letter ו in the word עתודים, rams, in verse 17. [On the other 13 occasions when that word occurs in the Torah it is always spelled defective, i.e. without the letter ו. Ed.] The reason for these exceptions is to draw our attention to 6=ו new developments which occurred on that day. 1) It was the first day on which priests performed their functions. 2) It was the first day that the priests began the daily routine of blessing the people. 3) It was the first day on which the publicly financed sacrificial offerings in the Tabernacle were presented on the Altar. 4) It was the first day of the first month of the year. 5) It was the first anniversary of the calendar reform introduced in honour of the Exodus from Egypt. 6) On that day the first red heifer was burned and its ashes preserved to enable the Israelites to purify themselves. Ibn Ezra writes that the meaning of the additional letter ו at the beginning of the word וקרבנו is grammatically completely justified in view of the Torah having written previously in verse 12 that Nachshon was the first of the princes to offer this particular offering. The Torah continues therefore by listing the details of his offering. Of the princes who offered the parallel offering on the second day, (verse 18) the Torah writes: הקריב קרבנו, although at first glance these words appear superfluous, because so much verbiage had been written since verse 12. We have similar examples of such apparently superfluous verbiage when the Torah writes (Genesis 22,7) ויאמר יצחק אל אברהם אביו ויאמר אבי!, “Yitzchok said to his father Avraham, saying: “My father!” You will note that the Torah does not bother to write the word הקריב, ”he presented the offering,” in connection with any of the other 10 princes. This was in order to be as brief as possible without becoming misleading.

סלת בלולה בשמן למנחה, “filled with fine flour, mixed with oil, as a meal-offering.” Nachmanides writes that the princes consecrated the Altar with all the different kinds of offerings that would be offered on it in the future; this was the reason why they also offered meal-offerings on this occasion. Seeing that neither the incense offering nor the sin offering were of the categories that qualified for free-willed offerings, special dispensation had been required to enable them to present these offerings. Seeing that the guilt offering, אשם and the sin offering, חטאת are in respect of inadvertent transgressions, they are basically the same kind of offering so that the guilt-offering is not mentioned separately. It is possible that what is legislated here is a מצוה לדורות, not just a one time legislation, but whenever a Temple and an Altar would be inaugurated, the same procedures would apply, and that would explain why when Solomon consecrated his Temple he performed rites called חנוכת הבית, as did the men of the great Assembly when the second Temple was consecrated. (Compare Chronicles II 7,5 and Ezra 6,15) In all these instances the people initiating these rituals had divine inspiration and G’d subsequently anchored what they had done in the Holy Scriptures, eternalizing it..

זאת חנוכת המזבח, “this was the consecration of the Altar, etc.” In this instance the Torah had first familiarized us with all the details of the ritual, and then proceeded to summarize it once more. Rashi says that the reason why the Torah summarized all this once more was to teach us that the weights described here were so accurate that when each bowl or basin had been weighed individually, and when subsequently they were weighed collectively, the total corresponded precisely to the multiple we were led to believe. Nachmanides writes that he did not understand what Rashi had in mind when he wrote these lines, quoting Rabbi Moshe Hadarshan. What possible advantage could we gain from having this information? If he considered the fact that the weights correspond to one another as so remarkable that this was considered a miracle, what purpose would this miracle serve? G’d does not work miracles unless they were needed. If it was something natural, why did this fact deserve special mention? Rashi, i.e. Rabbi Moshehadarshan, wanted us to learn that ordinary vessels are not judged by the same standards as holy vessels, vessels used in the Temple. When ordinary vessels are weighed you will find that their weight varies slightly each time they are being weighed. When holy vessels are weighed they weigh precisely the same each time they are put on the scales. Rabbi Nathan described an experiment performed with the vessels used in the Temple. (Second Temple) according to which the vessels were not only melted down, but coins were minted from them. Subsequently, the coins were melted down and reconverted into the original vessels. It was found that there had been no loss of the original weight at all. All of this proves that already originally the gold used in those vessels was of the most refined kind, so much so that it contained no dross that would be burnt off during the repeated processes of melting those vessels down. Nachmanides concludes that the lesson to be learned from all this is that G’d honours those who fear Him. The princes brought all their various offerings on the same day, a day that all of them had agreed upon previously, so that it would become unavoidable that one of them would get his turn before his colleague when they lined up. Each prince would be given his flag in recognition of his offering. The order of the days in which the offerings were accepted on the altar corresponded to when the prince in question had received his flag. It was important to G’d (the Torah) that each prince and his offering would be named individually, as this was part of the honour paid to them by G’d. This is why the Torah did not write simply: “on the first day Nachshon brought the following offering, and he was followed by 11 other princes presenting duplicates of Nachshon’s offering”, although the Torah would have saved about 75 verses if it had done so. The reason for summarizing the offerings once more was to convey that the second prince had not needed to be inspired by his predecessor, etc., but that all had presented themselves at the entrance of the Tabernacle already on the first of Nissan, the first day when such offerings could be brought.