Exodus 26:15 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Very particular directions are here given about the boards of the tabernacle, which were to bear up the curtains. These had tenons which fell into the mortises that were made for them in silver bases. The boards were coupled together with gold rings at top and bottom, and kept firm with bars that ran through golden staples in every board. Thus every thing in the tabernacle was very splendid, agreeable to that infant state of the church, when such things were proper to possess the minds of the worshippers with a reverence of the divine glory. In allusion to this, the new Jerusalem is said to be of pure gold, Revelation 21:18. But the builders of the gospel church said, silver and gold have we none; and yet the glory of their building far exceeded that of the tabernacle. St. Paul, probably, alludes to this tabernacle, with its pillars and sockets, when he terms the church the pillar and ground (εδραιωμα, seat rather) of the truth, 1 Timothy 3:15. As beauty and strength were united in the tabernacle, so they are in the church of Christ: “beauty, which renders it the admiration of angels; and strength, which defies all the malice of devils.”