Exodus 38:8

In the description of the laver and its stand, one thing stands out: Scripture gives no dimensions. But it carefully notes where the material came from... The copper mirrors came out of Egypt, and in very many cases they were dedicated to the goddess of personal ornament. In devotion to God the women gave up what they prized as an aid to their own beauty. And God used their gift to make His priests themselves fit for His presence in the Holy place. So the mirrors that had been devoted to self-inspection became the vessel of self-purification.

Host, tzava, as in verses 23, 30, etc.; see Exodus 38:8, and 1 Samuel 2:22, tza-va (to assemble by troops).

Women furnished the material for the laver. They gave their looking glasses, which were of shining metal. They were pious women of Israel who gave willingly what must have been a costly possession. They assembled at the door of the tabernacle. The Chaldean paraphrase is "of the mirrors of the women, which came to pray at the door of the tabernacle."

The mirror may speak to us of the vanity and self-occupation which beget pride. Isaiah 3:23 lists the articles by which the daughters of Israel fed their pride, and among them we find "glasses" — which can also be translated "mirrors." What a fruit of divine grace it is to give up willingly what naturally feeds pride, and so to gain what fits us for communion with God. God's grace alone can do this — turn the mirror into a laver.

This passage points back to what followed the sin of the golden calf. Moses had set up a tent outside the camp and called it the tent of meeting. As a sign of humiliation all the people were to strip off their ornaments, and those who sought the Lord went out to that tent outside the camp. The mirrors of the repentant women of Israel served to make the bronze laver. They acknowledged their sin and humbled themselves; they stripped themselves of what until then had served their vanity. How could they still delight to look at their natural faces? ... What showed them in their state of sin had to be destroyed. So the bronze laver is the righteousness of God judging the old man, so that the believer may have practical, daily purification by the Word. To deliver us, God brought this righteousness upon Christ.

The laver was made out of a special kind of brass: the bronze mirrors used by the women who assembled at the entrance of the tent of meeting (Ex. 38:8). It was made out of the very articles that pictured their natural condition, and so showed their need of cleansing. If the brass therefore revealed and judged the condition of those it tested, the water was there to cleanse and purify. For the water is a symbol of the Word.

Exodus 38:8 informs us that it was made from the mirrors of serving women. So the mirrors reflected the condition of the priests' feet as they came near. In the same way the holiness of God, which the copper speaks of, faithfully reveals our true condition. The water of the Word then washes away the defilement that holiness has exposed.

This fact is full of meaning. We are always prone to be "like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like." Nature's mirror can never give a clear and lasting view of our true condition... The man who turns constantly to the word of God will be kept in the holy activities of the divine life. He is the man who lets that word tell on his heart and conscience.