In the previous parasha Mitzpatim Moshe leaves to go up into the clouds for forty days and forty nights. Now we are here in Terumah with all the instructions for making the Mishkan. It would appear that this is happening simultaneously as Moshe sojourns on the mountain. The time sense is also varied in the following three expressions which follow a series of instructions for building the Mishkan
Shemos: 25: 40. Now see and make according to their pattern, which you are shown on the mountain.
First there is the imminent sense of the present. It is taking place now. Moshe sees and makes according to what he is being shown on the mountain. The pattern refers to the pattern of creation as illustrated during the six days of creation plus Shabbat.
Shemos: 26: 30. "And you shall erect the Mishkan according to its proper manner, as you will have been shown on the mountain
Next we move into the future with Moshe carrying those instructions forward according to what he is again shown on the mountain. The proper manner of making refers to the Sephiroth as Chokmah (wisdom) illustrates the central idea and is evolved by Binah (understanding) and put into action by Daas (knowledge also the secret of the testimony – Daas spelled as AdooS discussed earlier.
Shemos: 27:8. You shall make it hollow, out of boards; as He showed you on the mountain, so shall they do.
Finally the future once again but this time there is the delegation of the making that Moshe will explain as he has been shown on the mountain. Hollow refers to the Aron (ark) and how it is to be carried from place to place. Even though this is something that they will do there is also a sense of the present reality of moving with the temple as they move.
What these three verses illustrate to us is that the making of the temple is continuous even so as we understand that Hashem continuous brings the world into being. This is a temple that is was and always will be. It is also a temple that appears to us without as a holy place wherein the holy of holies resides as well as a spiritual representation of our relationship with Hashem.
The temple itself however is not placed into physical form until Shlomo makes this happen here.
1 Kings 6: 1 And it came to pass in the four hundred and eightieth year after the children of Israel were come out of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon's reign over Israel, in the month Ziv, which is the second month, that he began to build the house of the LORD.
It took four hundred and eighty years to begin work on the tabernacle, which spelled as Sukkat (Samech Kaph Tav) by gematria adds up to 480!
The inner workings of how the Mishkan is to be constructed also point to how the various connections in Torah itself are established just as we have shown the relationships above between the beginning of creation, the building of the Mishkan and the actual temple built by Shlomo (Solomon).
Torah is a garment whose threads are intertwined linking one dimension to another endlessly unifying the parts into the whole fabric of being.
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