Essay for Exodus 40:34

The book ends, not with a paean to the completed structure or its builders, but with a description of how its purpose was fulfilled. Central is the “cloud,” basically synonymous with God’s “Glory,” which now dwells among the people of Israel. At the end of the book of Exodus, which began with a people in servitude to an earthly god-king, we find a people that has completed one aspect of service to a divine king, ready to set forth on their journey to a Promised Land in the company of the king’s inextinguishable presence.