Page 196 - Through New Eyes

The World of the Patriarchs 193
them. He tore apart the nation, reducing it to slavery, but only
so that He could rebuild it again more glorious than before,

Conclusion
The patriarchal establishment was a relatively loose one.
There was no national political organization, because the people
existed under the government of other nations. Thus, in terms
of analogical symbolism, there was no house or temple signify-
ing them as God’s people.
The patriarchs dwelt in tents. It is a myth to think of them as
nomads, moving from place to place. Actually, the patriarchs
lived in only a few places, and for years at a time. Abraham lived
at Hebron for about twenty-five years, and at Beersheba in
Gerar for about seventy-five years. If you live in a tent for such
long periods of time, you obviously are not living in a teepee or a
“Bedouin” tent. To get an idea of the patriarchal tent, we need
look no further than the Tabernacle. Such tents had wooden
boards for walls, embedded in sockets and held up with metal
rods. They had wooden pillars separating various rooms. They
were covered with roofs of water-tight leather. The only thing
that made them “tents” was the fact that they had curtains along
the walls (along with the boards), and the fact that they could, if
necessary, be dismantled.
Thus, the patriarchal tent was a semi-permanent affair. The
patriarchs were not constantly on the move. This means that the
sanctuary-groves they set up were not meager affairs. If you live
in a place for twenty-five years, it stands to reason that you will
make your place of worship into something nice. The patri-
archal worship-oasis was not a rude affair.
Nevertheless, even though the imagery is very Edenic, there
is an important difference between the patriarchal worship-garden
and the Garden of Eden. God planted the Garden of Eden. God
set up that sanctuary. The patriarchal gardens were set up by men,
though under divine guidance. Like Abraham’s and Jacob’s “shadow
conquests” of the land, these sanctuary-oases were “shadow gar-
dens.” Not until Moses would God give explicit directions and
take steps to plant His own garden-sanctuary in the earth.
In summary, the patriarchal establishment had the follow-
ing features: