The Israelites begin construction of the sacred objects for worship of God. I don't have much to say about this, but I did note the following:
Exodus 35 begins with a discussion of the importance of physical rest on the Sabbath. Since what follows are the construction of the sacred items, it seems that the implicit message is "when you build these things, do not work on the Sabbath. Even those these items are ultimately for the worship of God, take a break from their construction and rest on the Sabbath."
We also get a new specific rule of resting on the Sabbath - do not start a fire. I think this is the basis why modern Orthodox Jews do not flip light switches or push elevator buttons on Saturday. I've heard that some hospitals in NYC have elevators that automatically go to every single floor in one long continuous loop for this purpose.
My editorial - building a fire in the wilderness before the invention of matches took far more work than flipping a light switch in the modern era.
Bessael does the metalworking after he is filled with God's spirit of metalworking talent. Maybe we should all pray for such abilities in our respective vocations.
Oholiab makes the linens for the tabernacle.
The people bring all the necessary things to build the objects. There seems to be a large spontaneous outpouring of donations and they even had leftover material. The people are instructed to donate as to the level of they feel freely in their heart. However, the people may have been acting out of guilt from having recently built the golden calf, but this indicates there is at least some turnaround and a desire to follow God.
My French Bible says they used 30 kilograms of pure gold for the lamps.
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