founded forever (or from eternity)’.5 The psalmist is saying that, in some way, God designed Israel’s earthly temple to be comparable to the heavens and to the earth. Similarly, the earlier ‘pattern of the tabernacle and the pattern of all its furniture’ was made ‘after the [heavenly] pattern … which was shown … on the mountain’ (Exod. 25:9, 40; cf. Exod. 26:30; 27:8; Num. 8:4; Heb. 8:5; 9:23–24). The following study will attempt to demonstrate that the symbolism of the tabernacle is essentially