Complete Exodus 35 Summary and Study Guide: The Willing Offering for the Tabernacle

Ten chapters before this one, God asked Israel for a willing offering so that He could have a house among them. What they built instead was a golden calf. This Exodus 35 summary and study guide takes up the chapter where that first request is finally answered.

Setting the Stage

Back in Exodus 25, God gave Moses the plans for a tent where He would live in the middle of the camp, and He asked for the materials to build it from anyone who wanted to give. Nothing came of it. While Moses was still on the mountain receiving those plans, the people below melted their gold jewellery into the shape of a calf and worshipped it, and the time that followed was taken up with judgment, pleading and a renewed covenant.

Exodus 35 is where the request from Exodus 25 finally gets an answer. The people who spent their gold on an idol are asked for gold again, and this time they bring it. From here to the end of the book, Exodus is one long account of the tent going up.

Comprehensive Exodus 35 Summary

Moses called the whole nation together and began with the Sabbath. Before he said one word about building, he told them that six days were for work, that the seventh belonged to the LORD, and that no fire was to be kindled in their homes on that day.

Then he passed on God’s request for materials: gold, silver and brass; blue, purple and scarlet yarn; fine linen and goats’ hair; ram skins dyed red, badger skins and acacia wood; oil and spices; and the stones for the breastplate and the ephod, the high priest’s outer vestment. One condition governed all of it. Only those who wanted to give were to bring anything at all.

He called for workers as well, and read out the build list in a different order from the one God gave on the mountain, starting with the tent itself rather than the ark. Anyone with skill was to make the tabernacle itself, then the ark, the mercy seat and the veil, then the table, the lampstand and the incense altar, then the altar of burnt offering, the basin and the courtyard hangings, down to the tent pegs and their cords, and finally the garments for Aaron and his sons.

Then Moses dismissed the assembly, so each household decided at home rather than in front of a crowd, and the people came back carrying what they had. Men and women brought gold jewellery. Others brought dyed yarn, linen, animal skins, silver, brass and timber.

The women who could spin, spun, and the most skilled among them worked the goats’ hair, the hardest of those fibres to handle. The leaders brought the gemstones for the priest’s garments, along with spice and oil.

Moses closed by naming the two men God had chosen. Bezaleel was filled with the Spirit of God for the work, and both he and Aholiab were given the ability to teach that work to everyone else.

One Word Summary

• Willing: the chapter’s own word for every gift that arrives
• Response: the answer to a request God made ten chapters earlier
• Assembly: Moses gathers the entire nation before anything is built
• Skill: God supplies the craftsmen as well as the materials

In One Sentence

Moses gathers Israel, restates the Sabbath, and asks for materials and workers to build the tabernacle; the men and women bring their gold, cloth and timber freely, and Moses names Bezaleel and Aholiab as the men God has filled with His Spirit to lead the work.

Theme of Exodus 35

Exodus 35 is about forgiveness becoming work. A nation that had been spared now has something to do, and what it does is hand over its own property and its own labour to build a place for God to live. Two ideas run alongside that one.

God fences the work with a day of rest, so that devotion to the project cannot swallow devotion to Him. And the chapter credits the giving to hearts that were stirred rather than to Moses’ asking, which may point past the givers to the God who moved them.

Exodus 35 Outline

• Exodus 35:1-3: Moses gathers Israel and restates the Sabbath, adding that no fire is to be kindled on it.
• Exodus 35:4-9: Moses relays God’s request for materials, to be brought only by those who are willing.
• Exodus 35:10-19: Moses calls for skilled workers and lists everything to be made, from the tabernacle down to the priests’ garments.
• Exodus 35:20: The congregation leaves Moses and goes back to their tents.
• Exodus 35:21-24: Men and women bring gold jewellery, dyed yarn, linen, skins, silver, brass and acacia wood.
• Exodus 35:25-26: The women who can spin bring yarn of linen and of goats’ hair.
• Exodus 35:27-29: The leaders bring gemstones, spice and oil, and the nation’s giving is called a willing offering.
• Exodus 35:30-35: Moses names Bezaleel and Aholiab, whom God has filled with skill and with the ability to teach it.

What the People Were Asked to Bring

Verses 5 to 9 are one list. It opens with the costliest metals and works outward through cloth, skins, timber, oil and stones, and somebody in that camp owned every category on it.

Gold heads the list and goats’ hair sits a few lines below it, and the chapter calls both of them the LORD’s offering. The shape of the list does more work than any single item on it, because between the gold at the top and the goat hair below it, nobody in the camp could say they had nothing to give.

Observations from Exodus 35

The Same Gold Went the Other Way

In Exodus 32:2-3 Aaron told the people to break off the golden earrings their wives, sons and daughters were wearing, and he made a calf out of them. In Exodus 35:22 men and women come and bring “bracelets, and earrings, and rings, and tablets, all jewels of gold”.

They brought the ornaments they wore, the same kind of gold from the same ears, and this time they carried it to the tabernacle. Coined money did not exist yet, so jewellery was how a family held its wealth, and handing it over meant handing over savings. Whatever the people felt about being forgiven, this chapter measures it by where the gold went.

The Order Was Reversed After the Calf

In Exodus 31 God named the craftsmen first (31:1-11) and gave the Sabbath law second (31:12-17), and the golden calf followed in the very next chapter. In Exodus 35 the sequence runs the other way.

Moses gives the Sabbath first (35:1-3) and names the craftsmen last (35:30-35), so the day of rest is settled before a single instruction about building is spoken. Read the reversal however you like, its effect is plain. The work of the sanctuary never outranked the day God had set apart.

Moses Sent Them Home Before They Gave

“And all the congregation of the children of Israel departed from the presence of Moses” (Exodus 35:20). Everyone went home before anyone brought anything. No collection was taken while the crowd was still standing there, and nobody had to decide with neighbours watching. The willingness this chapter keeps naming was given room to be real.

Heart Is the Word the Chapter Keeps Using

For a chapter concerned with gold, timber and dyed thread, the word that keeps returning is heart. It appears in verses 5, 10, 21, 22, 25, 26, 29, 34 and 35. Three of those tie it to wisdom, four to willingness, and in verse 34 the heart is where God puts the ability to teach.

Israel is bringing metal and cloth, and the chapter keeps pointing back at the hearts the metal and cloth came out of. Jesus later put the two in the same order: “where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Matthew 6:21). Watch what a person does with what they have and you learn what they love.

Difficult Verses Explained

Why Was Working on the Sabbath Punishable by Death?

Because it was a court penalty in the law God gave Israel as a nation at Sinai, and the verse states it without softening: “whosoever doeth work therein shall be put to death” (Exodus 35:2). Anyone in Israel who did work on that day was to be executed.

Numbers 15:32-36 records the sentence carried out once, on a man found gathering sticks, and God Himself gave that ruling. God had called the Sabbath the sign between Himself and Israel (Exodus 31:13), so breaking it struck at the mark of the relationship itself, and keeping it meant trusting Him to supply on a day nobody worked.

What Did God Mean by “Kindle No Fire” on the Sabbath?

The command in Exodus 35:3 is plain and its scope is not. Lighting a fire then meant real labour, usually rubbing wood against wood until it caught.

Bible teachers have long read the verse three ways: as a permanent ban on any household fire, as a ban on work fires specifically, which would rule out heating tools or melting metal for the tabernacle project about to begin, or as a rule tied to the wilderness years, since Scripture never calls this one a perpetual statute the way it does elsewhere. Scripture never returns to the question to settle it, and it is more honest to say so than to pick a reading and present it as certain.

Common Misunderstandings

• That Exodus 35 is a repeat of Exodus 25 to 31. The words are close and the difference is who is speaking to whom. Chapters 25 to 31 are God instructing Moses on the mountain. Chapter 35 is Moses instructing the nation, and the nation obeying.
• That because the offering was voluntary, giving was a side matter. No quota is set and no one is compelled, and yet the response was so large that the workmen soon had to ask Moses to stop the people bringing (Exodus 36:5-6).

Christ Connection

Exodus 35 is the chapter where a nation gathers materials so that God can live among them. John says what God eventually did with that idea: “the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us” (John 1:14). The verb John uses is the tabernacle word, and it means God pitched His tent in a human body. God did in His Son what Israel was collecting gold and cloth to build, and Hebrews 9:11 says Christ came “by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands”.

The rest of the chapter points the same direction, and the New Testament makes most of the links itself:

• The Sabbath at the front of the chapter. Hebrews 4:9-10 says a rest remains for the people of God, and that the one who has entered it has ceased from his own works. Colossians 2:16-17 calls the sabbath days a shadow, and says the substance is Christ.
• The willing offering. Hebrews 10:7 puts these words in the mouth of Christ: “Lo, I come… to do thy will, O God.” He gave Himself, and He was not compelled. Paul says the same thing about money in 2 Corinthians 8:9, where Christ gives up everything He had so that others gain.
• The mercy seat on Moses’ build list (35:12). The mercy seat was the lid of gold on the ark, the place where blood was sprinkled and God met His people. Romans 3:25 says God set Christ forth as the place where His anger against sin was satisfied, using the Greek word for that same lid, and Hebrews 9:5 names the mercy seat directly.
• The veil on the same list (35:12). Hebrews 10:19-20 says believers now enter the holy place “by a new and living way… through the veil, that is to say, his flesh”. Matthew 27:51 records that veil tearing from top to bottom when Jesus died.
• The table and the lampstand (35:13-14). Bread sat on that table and the lamps burned beside it, and Jesus said “I am the bread of life” (John 6:35) and “I am the light of the world” (John 8:12). The two things kept alight in the holy place point toward what He claims to be.

The building the people gave their jewellery for is long gone, and Peter says the house is now made of people: believers are “lively stones” being “built up a spiritual house” (1 Peter 2:5). What Bezaleel assembled out of acacia and gold, God is assembling out of the redeemed.

When, Where, and Why

• When: Late in Israel’s first year out of Egypt, after the covenant was renewed in Exodus 34 and before the tabernacle was raised “in the first month in the second year, on the first day of the month” (Exodus 40:17). Jewish tradition places this assembly on the day after the Day of Atonement, though the chapter itself gives no date.
• Where: The camp at the foot of Mount Sinai, where Israel had been since the third month after leaving Egypt (Exodus 19:1) and would remain until Numbers 10:11-12. Everything in the chapter happens in the open ground where the nation could be gathered at once.
• Why: Moses is recording obedience, and he records it by repeating God’s own words back almost exactly. The closing chapters of Exodus keep showing Israel doing what God said, in the wording God said it, because the point of the book is that God came to dwell with this people (Exodus 25:8) and this is how the dwelling got built. For the wider arc, see our Book of Exodus summary by chapter.

Key Verses

“Take ye from among you an offering unto the LORD: whosoever is of a willing heart, let him bring it” (Exodus 35:5).

Bring something to God, and bring it only if you actually want to. The Hebrew word behind “offering” here carries the sense of something lifted up and set apart, and the one condition attached to it is stated before a single material is named.

“And they came, every one whose heart stirred him up, and every one whom his spirit made willing” (Exodus 35:21).

They came because something inside them moved them to come. The verse says it twice in two different ways, which is the chapter’s way of insisting that nobody was pushed.

“And all the women whose heart stirred them up in wisdom spun goats’ hair” (Exodus 35:26).

These women spun goats’ hair, which many Bible teachers say took more skill than spinning linen. It was the roughest material on the list, and it went into the covering that sat on the outside of the tent. God receives it here on the same terms as the gold, which means the plainest work done for Him is counted alongside the finest.

“And he hath filled him with the spirit of God, in wisdom, in understanding, and in knowledge, and in all manner of workmanship” (Exodus 35:31).

God filled Bezaleel with His Spirit, and what came out of it was skill with gold, stone and wood. Scripture ties the Spirit of God to a trade here, in the same sentence.

Key Lessons from Exodus 35

• God settled the question of rest before He raised the question of work, putting the Sabbath ahead of every instruction about the tabernacle (Exodus 35:1-3).
• Moses announced Bezaleel and Aholiab publicly, so the whole nation knew who would be building with what they had just handed over (Exodus 35:30, 34).
• Moses sent the people home to decide rather than collecting from them on the spot, so that what came back was chosen and not squeezed (Exodus 35:20-21).
• Skill is treated here as something God gives for use and not for keeping, since Bezaleel and Aholiab were made able to teach it away (Exodus 35:34).

To go deeper into what this chapter asks of the reader, read our full study: Lessons from Exodus 35.

Bible Study Questions

1. Moses opens with the Sabbath before mentioning the tabernacle at all (Exodus 35:1-3). What does that ordering say about how God ranks work done for Him?
2. Exodus 35:5 sets one condition on the offering. Why do you think God attached willingness rather than an amount?
3. Read Exodus 32:2-3 alongside Exodus 35:22. What has changed between the two scenes, and what has stayed the same?
4. Verse 20 says the people left Moses before they brought anything. How does that detail change the way you read verses 21 to 29?
5. Exodus 35:25-26 singles out the women who spun. What does the chapter appear to value about their contribution?
6. God equips Bezaleel for craftsmanship by His own Spirit (Exodus 35:31). How should that shape the way ordinary skilled work is valued in the church?

If you would like to test how well you know the chapter, try our Exodus 35 quiz with answers.

Frequently Asked Questions

Exodus 35, The Full Text (KJV)

Read the full chapter below for reference.

1 And Moses gathered all the congregation of the children of Israel together, and said unto them, These are the words which the LORD hath commanded, that ye should do them.

2 Six days shall work be done, but on the seventh day there shall be to you an holy day, a sabbath of rest to the LORD: whosoever doeth work therein shall be put to death.

3 Ye shall kindle no fire throughout your habitations upon the sabbath day.

4 And Moses spake unto all the congregation of the children of Israel, saying, This is the thing which the LORD commanded, saying,

5 Take ye from among you an offering unto the LORD: whosoever is of a willing heart, let him bring it, an offering of the LORD; gold, and silver, and brass,

6 And blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine linen, and goats’ hair,

7 And rams’ skins dyed red, and badgers’ skins, and shittim wood,

8 And oil for the light, and spices for anointing oil, and for the sweet incense,

9 And onyx stones, and stones to be set for the ephod, and for the breastplate.

10 And every wise hearted among you shall come, and make all that the LORD hath commanded;

11 The tabernacle, his tent, and his covering, his taches, and his boards, his bars, his pillars, and his sockets,

12 The ark, and the staves thereof, with the mercy seat, and the vail of the covering,

13 The table, and his staves, and all his vessels, and the shewbread,

14 The candlestick also for the light, and his furniture, and his lamps, with the oil for the light,

15 And the incense altar, and his staves, and the anointing oil, and the sweet incense, and the hanging for the door at the entering in of the tabernacle,

16 The altar of burnt offering, with his brasen grate, his staves, and all his vessels, the laver and his foot,

17 The hangings of the court, his pillars, and their sockets, and the hanging for the door of the court,

18 The pins of the tabernacle, and the pins of the court, and their cords,

19 The cloths of service, to do service in the holy place, the holy garments for Aaron the priest, and the garments of his sons, to minister in the priest’s office.

20 And all the congregation of the children of Israel departed from the presence of Moses.

21 And they came, every one whose heart stirred him up, and every one whom his spirit made willing, and they brought the LORD’S offering to the work of the tabernacle of the congregation, and for all his service, and for the holy garments.

22 And they came, both men and women, as many as were willing hearted, and brought bracelets, and earrings, and rings, and tablets, all jewels of gold: and every man that offered offered an offering of gold unto the LORD.

23 And every man, with whom was found blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine linen, and goats’ hair, and red skins of rams, and badgers’ skins, brought them.

24 Every one that did offer an offering of silver and brass brought the LORD’S offering: and every man, with whom was found shittim wood for any work of the service, brought it.

25 And all the women that were wise hearted did spin with their hands, and brought that which they had spun, both of blue, and of purple, and of scarlet, and of fine linen.

26 And all the women whose heart stirred them up in wisdom spun goats’ hair.

27 And the rulers brought onyx stones, and stones to be set, for the ephod, and for the breastplate;

28 And spice, and oil for the light, and for the anointing oil, and for the sweet incense.

29 The children of Israel brought a willing offering unto the LORD, every man and woman, whose heart made them willing to bring for all manner of work, which the LORD had commanded to be made by the hand of Moses.

30 And Moses said unto the children of Israel, See, the LORD hath called by name Bezaleel the son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah;

31 And he hath filled him with the spirit of God, in wisdom, in understanding, and in knowledge, and in all manner of workmanship;

32 And to devise curious works, to work in gold, and in silver, and in brass,

33 And in the cutting of stones, to set them, and in carving of wood, to make any manner of cunning work.

34 And he hath put in his heart that he may teach, both he, and Aholiab, the son of Ahisamach, of the tribe of Dan.

35 Them hath he filled with wisdom of heart, to work all manner of work, of the engraver, and of the cunning workman, and of the embroiderer, in blue, and in purple, in scarlet, and in fine linen, and of the weaver, even of them that do any work, and of those that devise cunning work.