Commentary for Exodus 38:30

ויעש בה, “he made of it, etc;” the word בה is used here instead of the word ממנה, which we might have expected.

את אדני פתח אהל מועד, “the sockets of the pillars supporting the curtain at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting. Sixty five talents of copper were used for constructing sockets. They were needed for each side of the courtyard around the Tabernacle, one talent for each socket. From the five talents plus remaining, they made the cover for the copper altar, as well as its appurtenances and the clasps needed to hold together the curtains used for the roof which had loops accommodating these clasps. They also made copper hammers to drive into the ground the pegs needed to hold down the edges of the curtains above the Tabernacle which straddled the ground, as Rashi has explained at the end of Parshat T’rumah. We do not have to wonder how they had copper left over for the construction of the laver and its stand. Seeing that the materials for those items had been donated by the women, i.e. their mirrors, they are not counted separately as donations of copper. No one should think that only the amounts mentioned here were donated by the people. Much more was donated. The Torah only accounts for the amounts which were used directly in the construction of the Tabernacle. The excess of the donations became part of the Temple treasury, and was used for all manner of communal needs. Just as the number 600000, that the Torah included in the census did not include the people who had not yet reached the age of twenty or the ones who were past the age of sixty, and all the women, so that most likely the total number of Israelites at the time exceeded 23 million, so it would be foolish to assume that only the amounts recorded in our portion were donated. From chapter 35,24, it is clear that anyone who felt inclined to make a donation could do so, and no doubt that included people under the age of twenty and over the age of sixty, and the women. Even the males between twenty and sixty who had to contribute a half shekel, most likely donated in excess of this and not only silver coins. The Torah wrote that there was oversubscription, compare 36,7.