And God told Moses that he wanted to live closer to the Israelites, because he was tired of getting loaded on all the booze they were offering him and then having to dodge the cops while driving all the way back up to the top of the mountain to crash for the night. Unfortunately, he felt the tents the Israelites were living in were shitholes, so he wanted them to build him a house of his own.

Accordingly, he asked Moses to get the men to donate various goods. Any man who was willing to donate freely of his own volition would be shown God's amazon.com wishlist and could choose to donate anything on it.

God's Wish List:

• Precious metals, specifically gold, silver, and brass, for His Holy Bling.
• Blue, purple, and scarlet fine linens, for His Holy Fitted Sheets.
• Goats' hair, for His Holy Toupee.
• Rams' and Badgers' skins (with the rams' skins dyed red) for His Holy Shoes.
• Shittim (probably acacia) wood, for His Holy Wood-Frame House.
• Oil for His Holy Lamps.
• Spices for His Holy Anointing Oil and Holy Incense used to mask the smell of His Holy Bong.
• Onyx stones, to be set into the ephod and breastplate His Holy Priests would be wearing while they hang out in His Holy Wood-Frame House.

God then sat down at His Holy Drafting Table and proceeded to show Moses precisely how he wanted his new house (or "tabernacle") built. He started by spelling out in excruciating detail how he wanted his ark (cabinet, not big boat) to be built. If you're short on time, you can see what it was meant to look like by renting Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark and fast forwarding until you see Nazis.

First, he said, the ark should be built out of the shittim wood gathered earlier. This ark would be 2.5 cubits long, 1.5 cubits wide, and 1.5 cubits high, for a total volume of 5.625 cubic cubits. Understanding that this may not give a very useful idea of how big this thing was supposed to be to modern readers, we should mention here that, assuming God was referring to the Egyptian royal cubit, each cubit would be 7 palms in length, meaning the ark would be 17.5x10.5x10.5 palms. Knowing that one palm is equal to 4 fingers, one could of course trivially convert this into fingers as well, in case you wanted to build one of these but didn't have a palm or cubit-stick handy. Hopefully this clears up any confusion.

Anyway, once this wooden box was built, God wanted it to be overlaid with gold both inside and out, with a crown of gold circling it. Four gold rings would then be attached, two on each side, at the corners. Gold-plated wooden rods (also to-be-constructed) could then be threaded through these rings and used to carry the box around.

God instructed Moses to place the stone tablets he mentioned in the previous chapter in the ark and keep them there. Then, a “mercy seat” should be constructed to place over the ark. The seat would be made of gold and would be of the same width and length of the ark itself. Two cherubim would then be sculpted out of gold and placed on either end of the seat, with their wings stretching out to cover the seat, presumably to keep anyone from trying to sit there. The cherubim would face each other, and God would appear above the seat between these two angels whenever he wanted to pay the Israelites a visit.

God further told Moses to build a table out of the leftover shittim wood. The table would be 2 cubits long, 1 cubit wide, and 1 cubit high. It would also have a border around it one hand's breadth wide (whether this is a metric of Imperial hand's breadth is unspecified), which would be encircled with a golden crown. The table would have rings around it, with rods placed through those rings for carrying it around, just like the ark.

The place settings for the table, including the spoons, forks, knives, plates, and bowls, would all be made of pure gold. There should always be a loaf of shewbread on the table, just in case God got hungry and wanted to pop in for a quick snack.

On top of the table should be placed a candlestick made from pure beaten gold. The candlestick would have three branches coming out each side, and one in the middle, for seven total branches. Each branch should have a little flower and knob on it, with an almond-shaped bowl on top. Seven candles should be made special for this particular candlestick, and all of the various candle lighting and snuffing tools should be made of pure gold as well.

For those of you already nodding off, we should mention at this point that the details of God's Holy Construction Project go on for another few chapters, so you might want to go ahead and brew another pot of coffee.