Tabernacle in the Wilderness 21 or at least often, denoted in the Bible.* Only one other term is used as frequently as this is to indicate that structure; this other term being, in Hebrew, mishkan, which is usually translated, in our English versions, ' tabernacle, and means “dwelling-place.” Now if this rendering of those words is correct, we would seem to have already reached the goal of our endeavor. That is to say, we have actually found the Tabernacle in existence. I t existed, as an undeniable reality in the times of David and Solomon, or at least in those of Solomon; and a positive proof of that matter are these words we have just quoted from 1 Kings 8 :4. But the higher critics, or especially Wellhausen, are not so easily to be caught with an admission as to an interpreta tion of words; for even though Wellhausen does concede that the words “tent of meeting” signify as we have stated; nevertheless he undertakes to get rid of their real force by asserting that in this passage they are an interpolation, or that they do not belong to the original Hebrew text. How ever, neither he nor any other higher critic has ever yet been able to give any textual authority for such an assertion; they only try to argue the matter from internal evidence. But internal evidence alone, and especially such slim evidence of that kind as the critics have been able to adduce in this connection, is insufficient to establish the end desired. Be sides, those words, “tent of meeting,” are certainly found in our present Hebrew text, as also in the Septuagint version, both of which items being so, it is not at all likely that Wellhausen’s ipse dixit will have the effect of changing them. Such being the case, we may conclude that the structure ♦The words ohel moed seem to have been used first to designate the smaller tent (see p. 37 with footnote) which Moses used as a place of communion between Jehovah and his people; hence it was called the “tent of meeting.” But afterwards, when the regular taber nacle became such a place, the words were applied also to that structure.
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