And thou shalt make a vail
The use of this, as follows, was to divide the holy place from
the most holy place in the tabernacle; it has its name from
hardness, it being very stiff and strong, for it was made of
thread six times doubled, and was four fingers thick, as the
Jewish writers say: this vail may represent the sin of man, which
separates between God and man, was removed by the death of Christ
when the vail was rent, and so the way to heaven opened; or the
obscurity of the legal dispensation, the Gospel being veiled
under the shadows of the law, and the way into the holiest of all
then not so manifest, and particularly the ceremonial law, which
separated between Jew and Gentile, and is now abolished by the
death of Christ; or rather it was typical of the human nature of
Christ, his flesh, called in allusion to it the vail of his
flesh, ( Hebrews
10:20 ) . This vail was made of
blue, and purple, and scarlet, of fine twined linen of
cunning work;
it seems to have been made of the same materials, and in the same
curious manner of workmanship with the curtains of the
tabernacle, ( Exodus 26:1 ) , and was
itself no other than a curtain, and so it is interpreted by some
Jewish writers F24. It being made of "fine linen"
denotes the purity of Christ, of his nature, life, and
righteousness; of "twined linen", his strength, courage and
steadiness; "of blue, purple, and scarlet", the several graces of
the Spirit, with which his human nature was adorned, his flaming
zeal for his Father's glory and the good of his people, his
bloody wounds, sufferings, and death, the preciousness of his
blood, the dignity of his person, and his glorious exaltation,
purple and scarlet being the colours wore by kings:
with cherubim shall it be made;
signifying either the ministration of angels to him in his
incarnate state, or the mission of Gospel ministers by him, see (
Psalms
139:15 Psalms
139:16 ) .