Exodus 38:24

All the gold that was occupied for the Work. — Rather, that was made use of for the work.

The gold of the offering, was twenty and nine talents. — The gold talent is estimated by Poole as = 10,000 shekels, and the gold shekel as worth about £1 2s. of our money. In this case the gold employed in the Tabernacle would have been worth nearly £320,000. Some, however, reduce the estimate to £175,000 (Cook), and others to £132,000 (Thenius). In any case the amount was remarkable, and indicated at once the liberal spirit which animated the people and the general feeling that a lavish expenditure was required by the occasion. There is no difficulty in supposing that the Israelites possessed at the time gold to the (highest) value estimated, since they had carried with them out of Egypt, besides their ancestral wealth, a vast amount of gold and silver ornaments, freely given to them by the Egyptians (Exodus 3:22; Exodus 12:35).