אלה פקודי המשכן משכן העדת אשר פאד על פי צשה וג' (“These are the accounts of the Mishkan, the Mishkan of testimony which were made on Moshe’s order....”).
So begins our parasha.
The repetition of the words ha-Mishkan, Mishkan ha-êduth is striking, and apparently unnecessary: To any human editor, it would appear perfectly reasonable to delete the first word, so that the phrase would read: “These are the accounts of the Mishkan of testimony” without any significant change in meaning.
So why does the verse not read that way? What is the Torah trying to tell us?
B.
To begin seeking an answer, we first ask the question: What, precisely, does the word Mishkan mean?
The definition is a bit slippery, due to that quality of the Holy Language which the linguists term its triconsonantalism, that is, the fact that nearly every native word is based ultimately upon a root of three consonants. It will be noted that Mishkan has four and, as anybody with a חוש חי לשפה העברית (“a living sense of the Hebrew language,” as one of my teachers was wont to say) knows, the letter mem could either be part of a root, or a common nominal preformative such as we find in such other nouns as mizbéach “altar,” mitbach, “kitchen,” or mishpat, “judgment,” and likewise the letter nun could be a common nominal suffix, as in korban, “sacrifice,” or shulchan, “table.” These facts leave scope for what I have termed the Torah’s creative ambiguity, the likelihood that multiple derivations and meanings can be attributed simultaneously to particular words.
Let us begin by assuming that the root is mem-shin-kaf (chaf); where does this get us?
The Talmud asks: ומי איכא ירושלים למעלה? אין, דכתיב ירושלם הבנוי' כעיר שחברה לה יחדיו (“Is there in fact a Jerusalem Above? Yes, as it is written: ‘Jerusalem which is built like a city which has been twinned together’ [Psalms CXXII, 3];” תענית ה.). As Rashi ad loc. notes, King David’s use of the word chubbra indicates that the city has a chavéra, a “companion,” and since there is no other city on earth like it, that companion must be heavenly.
The heavenly, metaphysical Jerusalem corresponds in every respect to the physical city here below, to include, therefore, the Temple Mount, site of the Holy Temple, the most sacred spot on earth. Rabbeinu Bechayyei, commenting on our verse, notes this relationship between the heavenly Miqdash and the earthly one, and sees it reflected in the repetition in our verse: וגם יתכן שנבין מלת משכן מלשון המשכה לפי שהמשכן וכליו ציורים ודוגמא למקדש של מעלה כי בית המקדש של מטה מושך כח ממקדש של מעלה וכו' (“For it also makes sense that we may understand the word Mishkan from hamshacha [“drawing”], since the Mishkan and its vessels are representations of the Mikdash Above, for the Temple Below draws [moshéch] strength from the Temple Above....”).
The verb mashach signifies “to draw, attract;” the repetition of our word, understood as derived from its root, is that the Mishkan draws down sanctity and blessing into this world from its Heavenly counterpart, in the next world.
C.
And if we understand the mem to be a prefix, and the root to be shin-kaf (chaf)-nun, what then?
Rabbeinu Bechayei offers: וכן לשון משכן לשון שכינה וזהו שגתוב "לשכון כבוד בארצנו" (“And so Mishkan has the meaning Shchina [the Divine Presence or Residence], and this is what is written: ‘that glory/honor dwell in our land’ [Psalms LXXXV, 10]”). The Béyth ha-Miqdash is the Divine “residence," so to speak, the verb shachan signifying “to reside, dwell.” The Divine “residence” was built and then rebuilt; hence, we find the word Mishkan repeated; for two long periods in our history, Israel merited having the Divine Presence in their immediate midst.
But there is another word derived from the same root, mashkon: “pledge, collateral, mortgage,” and the midrash asks: למה "משכן משכן" שני פעמים? שנתמשכן על ידיהם, הוא שאנשי כנסת הגדולה אומרים "חבול חבלנו לך", הרי שנתמשכן שני פעמים (“Why [do we find] Mishkan, Mishkan, twice? For it was forfeit [as collateral] for [Israel] twice, as the Men of the Great Assembly say, ‘Corrupting we have been corrupt with You’ [Nehemia I, 7; note that the verb occurs twice]. Hence, [the Temple] was forfeit twice”; מדרש תנחומא פרשתנו ה'). The Êtz Yoséf adds that this is the reason why the first occurrence of the word has the definite prefix hé and the second does not, an indication of the five regular miracles which occurred in the first Béyth ha-Miqdash but not in the second (five is the gimatriya, the numerical value, of the letter hé).
But, as Rabbeinu Bechayei continues, that is not the only reason.
D.
As Rabbeinu Bechayei goes on to point out, the gimatriya of the four letters of Mishkan is 410, which equals the number of years the first Temple stood. Ha-Mishkan adds five to that number, and the word itself contains five letters, which altogether indicates the number of years that the second Temple stood, 420. The word ha-êduth (“the testimony”), spelt lacking the usual vav, is equal to 479, the number of years from the erection of the Mishkan to King Shlomo’s dedication of the first Temple (cf. I Kings VI, 1). V’chol elleh ha-cheshbonoth, concludes Rabbeinu Bechayei, ra’a otham Moshe b’ruach ha-qodesh (“and all of these calculations Moshe saw through prophecy”).
As our verse testifies: “These are the accountings of the Mishkan, Mishkan ha-êduth, which were made according to Moshe”).
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