pure gold

Just read the last bit of Exodus as part of one of those one-year Bible reading plans.* One thing that jumped out to even an OT novice like myself is how many times toward the end of the book it refers to various objects being made of "pure gold". Gold being a rather weak and nonmalleable metal, this strikes me as odd. How could they have made all those ornaments and such out of "pure gold" and had them last or even take shape in the first place? I'm sure they could have melted it to form the right shapes, but even then I wouldn't have thought it'd be strong enough to hold up and keep its form without breaking. We're talking stuff like rings and lampstands that would have been intricate and yet strong enough to hold up such things as curtains -- or in the case of a lampstand, hold itself up without breaking apart.

In the same passages, though, God tells them to overlay other things like wood poles with gold. So he was particular enough to spell out exact and differing requirements for each piece, and he wouldn't have commanded something that was impossible to do or create. So I guess one must conclude that the gold stuff was strong enough, or else come up with some theory as to what "pure gold" really means or how that gold was somehow special or different. I don't have any such theories in mind and that strikes me as shoddy, interpret-the-Bible-by-what-we-already-know exegesis anyway. So the former it is.

Oh well...you learn something new every day I suppose. I still think it's bizarre though.

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* I wanted to start at the beginning of the year, as I do at the beginning of every year, and I was as successful this year as I have been for about the last eight. But a couple of weeks ago I found a reading schedule that does the Bible in chronological order and figured that'd be a good way to try it. And I already have a Narrated Bible that's arranged in chronological order and is easier to read large chunks of than a normal one. (Unfortunately, the schedule is laid out differently than my Narrated Bible, which confuses and slightly annoys me.) One of the consequences of starting late is that I picked up in Exodus 32 and haven't gone back to cover the other stuff (Job, Genesis, most of Exodus) yet. And so I lack some context for the latter part of Exodus.