SR Hirsch has some characteristically stimulating comments about the description of the ark of the covenant in Exodus 25.

1) He points out that the phrasing at the beginning of the ark section (25:10) is different from the opening syntax for the other furnishings of the tabernacle. Instead of addressing Israel in the third person, Yahweh speaks in the third person: “they shall make.” This is the same phrasing as verse 8, which says “they shall make for me a sanctuary, and I will dwell among them.” The similarity of the syntax suggests that the ark is the central object in the tabernacle, a suggestion reinforced by the act that the ark comes first in the list of furnishings. In a sense, the whole point of the sanctuary is to make a place for the ark; in a sense, making the ark is the sum of making the tabernacle complex.

2) He suggests that the ark should be understood as “three containers” – an outer and inner gold box, with the wood between. He draws some anthropo-spiritual conclusions from this, arguing that the man is to be “sterling and firm, noble and genuine” inside and out. The triple structure does seem to have an anthropological parallel, at least structurally: Man is, in one model, skin, flesh, and heart. And that would mean that the ark contained a promise of the law being placed in the inner man, a promise fulfilled when the curtain was torn and the gifts of God in the ark revealed.

The triple structure also replicates the triple structure of the tabernacle as a whole, with its three layers of curtains, and the triply layered garments of the priest. The ark is a small sanctuary, the sanctuary an enlarged ark; the priest is a human ark, and a tabernacle among men. Describing the overlay of gold on the “inside” of the ark, the Hebrew uses a phrase that contains the word bayit , house; this is a common term, but it may hint at the notion that the ark was considered a “house” for the torah, manna, and rod.

3) Hirsch rightly argues that the poles of the ark are not merely for transport, but part of the symbolism of the ark. He notes that the poles were inserted even before the Torah tablets were put into the ark itself, and that the poles were to remain in the rings even when the ark was not in transport (which was not the case with the poles for the other furniture). He suggests that this points to the mobility and universality of the Torah: The tabernacle may be set in one place, and the rest of the furnishings are located in the land. But the Torah is not; the Torah is always prepared for travel, and this hints at the later prophetic promise of the Torah’s extension to the corners of the earth.