פרשת תרומה תש"ה - המשכן

ויתן אל משה וגו׳ AND HE GAVE UNTO MOSES etc. — There is no “earlier” or “later” (no chronological order) in the events related in the Torah: in fact the incident of the golden calf (related in ch. 31) happened a considerable time before the command regarding the work of the Tabernacle was given (ch. 25 and the following chapters). For on the seventeenth of Tammuz were the Tablets broken (when the people were worshipping the calf) and on the Day of Atonement God became reconciled with Israel (after Moses had prayed 80 days for forgivenness; so that it is very unlikely that the command for the building of the Tabernacle should have been given before that day) and on the next day, the eleventh of Tishri (cf. Rashi on Exodus 33:11, at end of comment on ושב אל המחנה), they began to bring their contributions for the Tabernacle which was set up on the first of Nisan. (From the seventeenth of Tammuz until the eleventh of Tishri are almost three months — ימים רבים) (Midrash Tanchuma, Ki Tisa 31).

And Moshe gathered...: ... And behold, Moses - after he commanded all that God said to him at Mount Sinai after the breaking of the tablets to Aaron and the princes and all of the Children of Israel, and he placed a veil on his face - proceeded to command and gather them together to him, all of the congregation, the men, the women and the infants. And it is likely that this was on the day after he came down. And he told all of them the matter of the tabernacle that he was commanded at first before he broke the tablets. Once the Holy One, blessed be He, had been appeased to them and gave them the second tablets and made a new covenant with them that God would go among them, they surely went back to their previous state and their nuptial love, and it was [hence] known that the Divine Presence would be among them, like the matter that He commanded at first - as He had stated (Exodus 25:8), "And make Me a sanctuary, so I will dwell among you." And so Moses commanded them now, according to everything he was commanded at first.

’Speak unto the children of Israel, that they take for Me an offering; of every man whose heart maketh him willing ye shall take My offering.

ועשו לי מקדש AND LET THEM MAKE ME A SANCTUARY — Let them make to the glory of My Name (cf. Rashi on v. 2) a place of holiness.

And let them make Me a sanctuary, that I may dwell among them.

And this is the offering which ye shall take of them: gold, and silver, and brass;

two hundred she-goats and twenty he-goats, two hundred ewes and twenty rams,

And the LORD appeared unto him by the terebinths of Mamre, as he sat in the tent door in the heat of the day;