“Hollow with boards shalt thou make it: as it was shewed thee in the mount, so shall they make it.”
Make the altar hollow, out of boards. It is to be made just as you were shown on the mountain. The hollow altar is built like a chest — boards forming the sides of a hollow interior. The hollow construction makes the altar lighter for transport and provides the interior space where the bronze grating sits. The practical engineering solution of a hollow altar serves the theological requirement that it always be ready to move. The closing instruction — make it just as you were shown on the mountain — is the fourth repetition of the pattern command (after 25:9, 25:40, 26:30). The repeated command to follow the pattern exactly is the covenant law's equivalent of the Decalogue's I am the Lord your God: the statement of authority that grounds every subsequent requirement.
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