Altar of Burnt Offering

The Altar of Burnt Offering is the portable altar of acacia wood, overlaid with bronze, that stood at the entrance to the Tabernacle. Built to precise dimensions and furnished for carrying, it anchors the sanctuary’s approach: offerings were made there, while the laver for washing stood between it and the tent.

Construction and Design

The altar was five cubits long and five cubits wide, forming a square, and three cubits high. Its four horns were made as one piece with the altar, and its surface was overlaid with bronze. The cooking and ash-handling implements—pots, shovels, basins, flesh-hooks, and fire-pans—were also bronze.

A bronze network grating sat beneath the ledge and reached halfway up the altar. Four rings held acacia-wood staves overlaid with bronze, allowing the altar to be borne on its sides. Its hollow plank construction made it a piece of sanctuary equipment designed to travel with the people.

Place in the Sanctuary

The altar stood at the entrance of the Tabernacle’s tent of meeting, inside a courtyard measuring one hundred cubits by fifty and enclosed by linen hangings. The court’s gate had a colored screen, while its pillars had bronze sockets and silver fittings. At the altar, the worshipper approached the sanctuary; beyond it, between altar and tent, stood the laver containing water for washing.

When Moses erected the Tabernacle, he placed the altar of burnt offering at the tent’s entrance and offered a burnt offering and a meal offering upon it. He set the laver between the altar and the tent so that he, Aaron, and Aaron’s sons could wash their hands and feet before entering the tent or approaching the altar. The altar thus occupied a defined place in a sequence of approach, offering, and ritual washing.

Offerings, Provision, and Covenant

The altar’s role extended beyond the Tabernacle’s daily arrangement. In instructions for life in the land, the first fruits of the ground were to be placed in a basket and brought to the chosen place where the LORD caused His name to dwell. A priest received the basket and set it before the altar; the offerer then recited Israel’s history, from ancestral wandering and oppression in Egypt to deliverance and arrival in a fertile land, before presenting the first fruits and rejoicing with the Levite and resident stranger.

The altar also framed Israel’s prescribed covenant ceremony on Mount Ebal. After crossing the Jordan, the people were to erect and plaster stones inscribed with the law and build an altar of unhewn stones, using no iron tool. They were to offer burnt offerings and peace offerings there, eat, and rejoice before the LORD. In this rite, altar and inscribed law stood together: worship, public memory, and the people’s obligations were enacted at the threshold of possession.