What Did Moses See?

“Scripture is boring!” I’ve heard people say this, and I’ve probably even thought it myself. But the more I learn about scripture, and the more familiar I become with it, the more interesting I find it. I am always learning something new.

While studying Hebrews 8 recently, I saw something I’d never noticed before. I’m not sure how I missed it, because it’s right there in plain writing. 

Let me show you. Here’s Hebrews 8:5:

[The levitical priests] serve at a sanctuary that is a copy and shadow of what is in heaven. This is why Moses was warned when he was about to build the tabernacle: “See to it that you make everything according to the pattern shown you on the mountain” (Hebrews 8:5 NIV).

The sanctuary in the Old Testament tabernacle was meant to be a copy and shadow of God’s heavenly dwelling. God’s home in heaven was the real deal, and the sanctuary of the tabernacle was only a temporary earthly replica of the heavenly reality.

What caught my attention was something in the quote from Exodus 25:40. God commanded Moses to construct the tabernacle like “the pattern shown you on the mountain.” When Moses was on Mount Sinai, God gave verbal intruction about how to build the tabernacle. But the verbal instructions, which are written down for us in Exodus 25-31 and 35-40, weren’t all God gave Moses. God showed Moses something that served as a pattern for tabernacle. This is what I hadn’t noticed before. Moses actually saw something he was supposed to replicate (See also Exodus 25:9; 26:30; 27:8).

Which brings up the question that kept my mind busy for a while: What exactly did Moses see? Did God show him a model of the tabernacle? A blueprint? A picture?

It could be any of those, I suppose. F. F. Bruce thinks there’s even a possiblity Moses was permitted to see “the heavenly dwelling place of God.”1 We know Moses saw “the form of the Lord” (Numbers 6:8), and God talked to him face. If anyone would be permitted at glimpse of God’s home, why not Moses?

It’s an intriguing thought, but it’s only conjecture. We just can’t know for certain what it was God showed Moses.

What we can know is that Jesus, our high priest, has not just seen God’s true dwelling place, but has entered it. What Moses (maybe) caught a glimpse of is the place where Jesus “always lives to make intercession for [us]” (Hebrews 7:25). He is “seated at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven, a minister in the holy places, in the true tent that the Lord set up, not man” (Hebrews 8:1–2). He now “dwells in God’s presence and ministers in the heavenly realm where God dwells.”2

And there’s more. Moses went to Mount Sinai, a place that made him tremble with fear (Hebrews 12:21), and God showed him something. But because of Jesus’s sacrifice of himself for us, believers “have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem …” (Hebrews 12:22). Because Jesus is our high priest, we are already citizens of the city God has built. And our hope, our inheritance, is to one day dwell with God in this city. Unlike Moses was, we will not be afraid in God’s presence. We will be part of “a joyful assembly” (Hebrews 12:22) because Jesus, our high priest, has cleansed us from sin. 

1 F. F. Bruce, The Epistle to the Hebrews, page 184.
2 Thomas R. Schreiner, Commentary on Hebrews, page 243.