Once everyone understood all of the laws of Shabbat, Moshe announced:
“Fellow Jews! We are ready to begin building our holy Mishkan, and everything in it. In order to build it, we need many kinds of materials: gold, silver, and copper... wool, linen, and animal skins... wood, precious gems, and olive oil. Anyone who has any of these things may donate as much as desired.”
The people were excited and responded enthusiastically to Moshe’s request. They ran to look through their belongings for items that could be used in the Mishkan.
Men gave whatever gold, silver, copper, and wood they had. Women didn’t hesitate to give up their jewelry and their copper mirrors. Even children gave whatever they could.
People crowded around Moshe, giving him piles and piles of donated materials. Moshe appointed helpers to weigh and measure all of the items, and they could hardly keep up! Faster than anyone had predicted, all of the materials needed for the Mishkan were collected...and more.
“Stop! That’s enough!” called Moshe. “The Jewish people are so generous, we already have much more than we need! No more donations, please!”
Everyone was pleased to hear this exciting news... that is, everyone except the nesi’im, the leaders of the twelve tribes. They were disappointed, because they had not yet given their donations. Of course, they had planned to donate materials, but they had decided to let the rest of the people give first. Then they would give whatever was still needed after that.
At least that was the plan. But they couldn’t have guessed that everything that was needed for the Mishkan would be donated so quickly! Well... almost everything...
Moshe said to the nesi’im, “I know you meant well, but we just don’t need any more gold, silver, copper, wood, wool, linen, skins... Wait! There are things that we still need. We need the precious gems for the Kohein Gadol’s clothes, and olive oil for the Menorah, and spices for the incense altar.”
With pleasure, the nesi’im gave Moshe gemstones and oil and spices, very happy to have a part in the great mitzvah of building the Mishkan.
