The Lamp

The lamp is perhaps the best known Tabernacle item. This blog looks at its detailed design. Once the design is established, we survey some important parables that build on the lamp.

Lamp Design (bom.paleo.in)

The link here is to a new page on the Bill Of Materials website. This page provides the downloadable model files for anyone that wants to build their own copy of the lamp.

There is an interactive 3d model on that page for anyone who wants to fiddle with the design itself. There are also a few photos of the finished model.

For anyone who might want to build a copy, beware, this is a large model. It is more like a small piece of furniture. Getting it to print well, especially with good surface finish, takes some 3d printing skill.

As designed, it is intended to be wired and use c7 size LED Christmas lights. See the parts list on that page for specifics. In an actual oil lamp version of this item, the top bowls would hold oil. Then colored glass would surround the flame. In this version those bowls cover the wiring for the lamp sockets. The bulb itself provides the color.

The text suggests building the lamp as 1 large piece of cast gold. Exodus era builders would of course have needed this to be rendered in metal to make it fire proof. We are taking liberty here to use gold colored plastic and electric lights. The design linked above has been done so it can be rendered in pieces on standard 3d printer beds and then assembled from parts.

The longest arms barely fit on standard beds, which turned out to work only by sheer luck. The connecting points between the bowls, arms, stem and the base are all carefully hidden. It has the appearance of 1 large print.

Basic Design

Most readers here are probably familiar with the basic shape of Jewish Menorah style lamps. This was the starting point for the design linked above. I originally thought this was going to be a simple project, because menorahs are so well known. Not so. I have been in a season of prophetic refinement that has been going on for about 2 months over this lamp.

I have not done all the Tabernacles articles yet, so I reserve some surprises later. But, it looks like all the articles are designed on a large version of the same grid that is used to design the letters.

So with a 2" letter size, the design grid is 3" square, or at times 3" cubed. So looking at the side of the lamp, the locations of the joints and bowls land on a 3" grid. This is a serious design requirement so it matches against other items that will be decorated with 2" letters.

The bowls and joints are themselves also 3" in size. Their shape is set to the pen shape and thus the shape of the map of Eden. Pen widths throughout create valences so those pieces are just over 3" in size.

These constraints force the 7 bowls across the top to be offset into a stair step pattern like you can see in the design. It is not flat topped like we typically see in Menorahs.

This better resembles certain lamp and candle holder designs found in some Christian contexts, like some Christmas decorations.

Lettering

The 7 arms/bowls are labeled. The left and right side bowls have punctuation. The 5 remaining bowls are marked with the 5 letters from the Paleo spelling of the name Abraham.

Use of the name Abraham is fundamental to the various purposes of the lamp, especially verification patterns. How those actually work shows up on other Tabernacle items.

Abraham is a special name. The man himself is important because he starts the time in history when there will always be a community of faith. As a name it has a special feature related to the vowels. Note that none of the 5 letters in that name share the same vowel.

We use that feature of his name to assign colors to all vowels. Let me explain.

Coloring

The lamp itself is tall. Symbolically it stretches up into the sky. It reaches up like a rainbow. Rainbow references in the text are hinting at this lamp.

The flame above each bowl is assigned a color in rainbow order. The letters for the name Abraham are thus assigned the same color. So the vowels for each letter are assigned these colors too.

Wa/Ta/Ha/Sa are thus red.

Ba/Sha are thus orange.

Re/Ge/The/Ne are thus yellow.

Fe/Ve/Pe/Ze are thus green.

Mo/Yo/Jo/Oo are thus blue.

The remaining color, Purple, is assigned to the Du/Qu/Ku/Lu letters. That vowel does not appear in Abraham's name. This is why purple is assigned to the lamps on the far right and far left.

Note that yellow is being assigned to the Re, the middle, the highest letter. Imagine looking south and at the same time looking at the lettered side of this lamp. At high noon, when the sun is brightest, and highest, it aligns with the yellow flame high above the Re. Purple twilight is at both the eastern and western horizons.

The travel of the sun from east to west is following the letters in the name. This is starting to establish left-to-right as the inspired reading direction. We will find more confirmation of this inspired reading direction when we get to the audit patterns that build from this lamp design.

Parables

Now that you know the basic design of the lamp, let me go through parables that are built upon knowing the lamp design. These are examples of what might be a general rule with Joshua and his parables. They might all require knowing the designs for the Tabernacles artifacts in order to be fully understood. In any case let me give you a couple examples.

Feeding 5000 (Mat. 14:14-21 BRB)

The parable of the feeding of the 5000 starts by surveying the available food. They find 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish. Of course, the disciples wondered, how can that be enough to feed all the people?

The lamp starts the interpretation for what is to come..

The 5 loaves are the 5 center letters of the lamp.

The 2 fish are the 2 sides of the lamp.

Joshua looks up to the skies and breaks the bread.

This is NOT looking up to, say, father god. This is telling us that the parable is based on looking up at the lamp. The 5 and 2 division of the lamp is important.

After breaking the bread he passes the parts on to his disciples and from there the food is multiplied and the people are fed.

The lamp sits in relationship to other Tabernacle items. Working together they teach how to generate additional volumes. This is what this parable is about.

Let me leave the details as to how this happens as an exercise to the reader. Hint: this process is related to the shape of the arms.

Dipping (John 13:21-30 BRB)

Note the previous parable is calling out the 5 middle lamp bowls as bread. On this point we can now see a parable built into the story of Joshua revealing Judas as the betrayer.

Joshua explains he will reveal the betrayer by dipping the bread in the cup and then passing that bread to his betrayer.

The bread is the 5 letters in the middle of the lamp. Same as the feeding of the 5000. But here, instead of 2 fish, we see a cup of wine.

Remember the formula for ink? Soot, water and fuser. The fuser is usually vinegar of some type. Vinegar is also known as a bad batch of wine.

Where is the wine on the lamp? The wine is the 2 purple bowls on the sides of the lamp. So the purple color is like red wine.

It may help to think of the lamp as like a big bowl of wine/oil. The bread is piled up in the middle.

So what did Joshua mean by using this specific action to reveal Judas?

In this story of the betrayal, we learn the lamp is also central to the act of finding and weeding out that which does not belong. Specifically the inserted writings of Jews.

Let me leave the details as to how the lamp does this as another exercise to the reader. Hint: It has to do with the name Abraham applied to the ink.

Promises To Abraham (Gen. 17 BRB)

The link here is to a long chapter dealing with how Joshua was going to establish his contract with Abraham. That chapter has many important details. It is of course high ground for editors to change the details.

Given you know that name is written on the lamp, and given you know it has something to do with manuscript multiplication, and given you know it has something to do with weeding out additions, think about what was said to Abraham when his name was changed from Abram to Abraham.

First point, Gen. 17:6-8, is that Abraham, his actual new 5 different vowels name, will be used to establish the contract. Only text that passes an audit pattern based on that name is inspired. Inspired writers will always pass some textual design constraint based in that name.

Second point, Gen. 17:9, is that name will be used to preserve the contract. By this we would say spelling of the name Abraham is related to the audit and recovery system for inspired parts.

Third point, Gen. 17:20, that 12 princes will come. The family growing is a parable about document multiplication. This is how 5000 are fed. The lamp is a component of this too.

If you back up to Gen. 15:5 you will see where Abram was told to count the stars. This a parable about offspring too, about 10,000 stars are thought to be visible to the naked eye from Earth. But stars are also a parable for the flames atop the lamp.

Rainbow Covenant (Gen. 9:12-13 BRB)

Go all the way back to the first reference to the rainbow. The link here is in the time of Noah.

We normally think of this as only the rainbow after a storm. This makes sense with Noah, of course. Rainbows are created by storms. But there is a detail in that story that now makes more sense.

Even in Noah's day, the rainbow is a sign of the contract. What does that have to do with Noah?

The lamp embodies the rainbow. Both are tied directly to the construction of inspired text. This linkage is part of the story in Ezekiel 1:28, where other Tabernacle items are in view, along with the rainbow.

That Noah passage means that seeing the rainbow, in the lamp and the systems of inspiration, is how the people of Earth will not face Noah like floods in the future.

To bad, of course, our collective faith ancestors lost the lamp. This is a point made in Jeremiah's day, see Jeremiah 25:10.

To leave this discussion on a higher note, remember, rebuilding of David's fallen tent, of Acts 15 fame, means recovery of the lamp. So it means recovery of the rainbow.

Walking The Lamp (Rev. 1:12-13 BRB)

Most of the references in the text to Tabernacle items leave out details that readers familiar with those items can fill in. The link here is to the Revelation 1 reference to Joshua walking amongst the lamp stands.

Now that I have built 1 of these, and set it up in the dark, I can see what is going on in this passage.

The individual flames are different colors and in different exact places. The shadows from this lamp are themselves rainbows. This is what anyone walking around the lamp at night will create. An interesting effect.

True Word Of Prophecy (2 Pet. 1:19-21 BRB)

Peter makes yet another reference to this same lamp. The passage linked here connects the lamp, ie this specific lamp design, to true words of prophecy.

He knows the function of the lamp. It is in part to determine what words are true words of prophecy. By knowing the design of the lamp, and how to use it, text can be verified as inspired.

It takes a few more items from the contents of David's fallen tent to make this all go. I am working as fast as I can to get them designed and prototypes fabricated.

More Later,

Phil