Exodus 40:34

Hebrew Bible

33 And he set up the courtyard around the tabernacle and the altar, and put the curtain at the gate of the courtyard. So Moses finished the work. 34 Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. 35 Moses was not able to enter the tent of meeting because the cloud settled on it and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle.

Luke 1:35

New Testament

34 Mary said to the angel, “How will this be, since I have not been intimate with a man?” 35 The angel replied, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called the Son of God. 36 “And look, your relative Elizabeth has also become pregnant with a son in her old age—although she was called barren, she is now in her sixth month!

 Notes and References

"... Many of the exegetes (Lyonnet, Sahlin, Hebert, Laurentin) who think that Luke portrayed Mary as the Daughter of Zion also find the symbolism of Mary as the Ark of the Covenant or as the Tabernacle of divine glory. The key to this symbolism is 1:35: 'Power from the Most High will overshadow [episkiazein] you.' I have shown above that this clause and its parallel ('The Holy Spirit will come upon you') represent the language of early christology, echoing phrases used in Gospel ministry accounts of the baptism and the transfiguration. Yet the cloud of divine presence that overshadows at the transfiguration is set against the background of Peter's offer to build tabernacles for Jesus, Moses, and Elijah (Luke 9:34-35). This reminds us that episkiazein, 'to overshadow' (along with skiazein, 'to shadow') was used to describe how the cloud of God's glory cast a shadow upon the Tabernacle in the wilderness (Exodus 40:35; Numbers 9:18,22). Indeed, the verb for overshadow and shadow described several forms of the divine presence in the OT, e.g., the cloud overshadowing the renewed Mount Zion and its festal assemblies (Isaiah 4:5); the cloud overshadowing the Israelites when they departed from the desert camp (Numbers 10:34); God overshadowing His chosen ones (Deuteronomy 33:12; Psalm 91:4); and the winged cherubim overshadowing the mercy seat or top of the Ark of the Covenant (Exodus 25:20; 1 Chronicles 28:18) ..."

Brown, Raymond E. The Birth of the Messiah: A Commentary on the Infancy Narratives in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke (p. 327) Doubleday, 1979

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