Like many children, my sisters and I would construct tents by lining up a few kitchen chairs and draping a sheet or two over the top. We would then play for hours in our newly built abode, pretending to be pioneers, roughing it inside the house. In time, I would graduate to roughing it in the great outdoors, first in our or a friend’s backyard and then in the woods.

Later in life, I figured out that tent camping entailed a lot of work with little time for pleasure. Once, while hunting, I camped in a canvas tent. It rained quite a bit that trip, and a nice belly of water pooled on top, ready to drip into the tent. When that happens, if someone accidentally touched it, it would leak from then on. When one is six feet tall, and the tent’s top is only five feet off the ground, a person must become a contortionist not to brush the ceiling. My wife informed me early in our marriage that she would love to go camping anytime, so long as it was in an RV!

Temporary Dwellings

Living in tents is a significant subject in Scripture. The first mention of them is in Genesis 4:20, informing us that some of Cain’s descendants, early cowboys, “dwelt in tents and [had] livestock.” The Patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, lived in tents as a way of life for many decades. Throughout their wilderness trek, the children of Israel lived in tents.

For the most part, the Bible’s imagery focuses on tents as temporary dwellings. Even the Israelites dwelling in tents or booths for forty years in the wilderness symbolizes impermanence. Although tents were among the earliest habitations of men, it is hard for us to imagine living in a tent for any significant length of time. Forty years would seem like an eternity!

But, living in them for that long, the Israelites made them as comfortable and ornate as possible. Archeologists found a similar tent, still intact, in the tomb of an Egyptian queen, a contemporary of Solomon. Its makers had stitched together the tent’s interior lining in a mosaic of thousands of pieces of dyed gazelle hide—in bright pink, deep golden yellow, pale primrose, bluish green, and pale blue—with thread to match. Many such tents were artistically woven like tapestries.

The looks of the exteriors of such tents, often called “houses of hair,” left much to be desired, but they were functional. Usually, they were made of woven goat hair since when goat hair gets wet, it contracts and forms a seal, reducing leaks. If it tore, the owner would easily weave a patch into the area to repair it. One might think such black tents would be hot, but they maintained a cool temperature even in the desert heat. A tent of this kind could take up to a year to weave and construct, but when done, it could accommodate as many as ten people.

Tent living as a way of life has all but disappeared. Some Arabians try to keep their desert lifestyle alive by living in traditional tents during the more moderate months of the year. Even so, in the winter, they return to their houses.

In the ancient Middle East, living in a tent daily for years or even a lifetime, as the Patriarchs did, was a way of life. Genesis 18:1, 6, 9 show Abraham sitting in the tent door in the heat of the day. Trees stood nearby, so he may have pitched his tent near them to provide shade or a windbreak. It appears Sarah was in the same tent.

However, Genesis 24:67 says Sarah had her own tent, which may have been the case in her later years. It was not uncommon for wives to have separate tents, but the wife’s tent was often attached to the main tent, separated from it by a curtain. Still, most camps were set up around the patriarch. If Sarah had a separate tent, it was most likely adjacent to Abraham’s.

A Life in a Tent

Abraham spent his early life in Ur of the Chaldees, a city on the Euphrates River with well-built houses and all the comforts that world offered. Why would he choose to become a lifetime sojourner living in a temporary dwelling? This change took unwavering faith, as Hebrews 11:8-10 attests:

By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to the place which he would receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going. By faith he dwelt in the land of promise as in a foreign country, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise; for he waited for the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God.

We often read about biblical characters and have difficulty grasping what they experienced or how hard their lives must have been. In Abraham’s case, it may help us to keep I John 2:15 in mind: “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” How many things did Abraham leave behind? Abraham and Moses were alike in terms of what they gave up. They lived the good life in their youth, Moses as a prince in the wealthiest, most powerful nation on earth at the time, and Abraham as the scion of a rich, blue-blooded family. Yet, they both walked away from all their things to follow a God they could not see—and live the rest of their lives in tents, to boot!

Early in my working career, I held a supervisory position, in which I tried not to expect others to do a job that I had not done myself. While working with the Army, I often saw the brass send a lieutenant fresh out of college—who, from all appearances, had never gotten his hands dirty—to manage a platoon of veteran enlisted men, some of whom had been in the Army for a couple of decades. I worked for several sergeants and master sergeants whom I could imagine having no qualms following into battle—and then there were some officers and even one full-bird colonel I would not follow across the room!

God does the same. He asks nothing of us that He has not experienced Himself—even living in a tent! In Hebrews 4:15, the author writes, “For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are.” When we think of the Israelites in the wilderness, we imagine the God of Israel leading His people by the pillar of cloud and fire, but we may not picture Him living in the “tent of meeting.” He had a tent of His own right in the middle of the camp! The God of the Old Testament, Jesus Christ, dwelt in a tent, the Tabernacle, alongside the Israelites every step of the way through the wilderness!

An Unusual Tent

But this was not the last time Jesus would live in a tent.

Notice John 1:14: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” God became a flesh-and-blood human being just like us, and as Hebrews 4:15 declares, He suffered temptation as we do. The apostle John adds that He “dwelt among us.” The word translated as “dwelt” more literally means “to tabernacle,” “to encamp,” or “to pitch a tent.” Here, John refers to the human body as a tent or tabernacle, a temporary dwelling.

Paul confirms this in II Corinthians 5:1-5:

For we know that if our earthly house, this tent, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed with our habitation which is from heaven, if indeed, having been clothed, we shall not be found naked. For we who are in this tent groan, being burdened, not because we want to be unclothed, but further clothed, that mortality may be swallowed up by life. Now He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who also has given us the Spirit as a guarantee.

Paul metaphorically describes our physical bodies in terms of a tent, a temporary dwelling, that we live in all the days of our lives. In it, we await the fulfillment of the same promise that Abraham, Moses, and all the other heroes of faith are still waiting for: the “house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.” He means the glorious, incorruptible, immortal body God will give His elect in the first resurrection (I Corinthians 15:50-53; see I John 3:2).

Tent Rules

He writes in verse 5 that “He who has prepared us for this very thing is God.” “This very thing” refers to being “further clothed” by eternal life in a spiritual body God has prepared for us. But He also prepares us for it! We spend much of our converted lives going through circumstances directed by God to train us for life as spirit beings. As Paul says, the gift of His Spirit is just a taste of the full spiritual life we are guaranteed to enjoy then.

In the American Civil War, as in all wars, many soldiers were captured and became prisoners. One prisoner, John Ransom, a Union soldier captured in a battle in Tennessee, was transported to Andersonville, Georgia, a notorious prisoner of war camp. He kept a detailed diary of what he and his fellow prisoners faced.

When new prisoners arrived, they did not just pick a tent or get assigned to one where they would stay for the duration. Despite all the captives being Union army soldiers, each man had to fight a cutthroat battle of survival from the time he arrived until he left or died. For starters, a prisoner had to be invited to join a group occupying a tent. If this happened, he had to live by strict rules, or his tent-mates would turn him out—and in a POW camp, one did not want to face all its hardships alone.

Upon his arrival, John tried to join a particular group but was informed it had no space. The only way he could enter was if someone died, and as mortality was high, he eventually received an invitation. The tent rules there were both practical and necessary. Occupants were expected to bathe daily, keep lice and other vermin to a minimum, exercise regularly, and drink only boiled water. Fighting with others in the tent was forbidden. Instead, they were to keep a cheerful disposition, for a bad attitude would destroy the morale of all the tent’s occupants. The rules urged everyone living in the tent to look out for his tent-mates and have their interests always at heart. Finally, they were to be on guard against bands of raiders who terrorized the camp by beating inmates, stealing, and even murdering them to get the tiniest morsel of food, article of clothing, or other valuable item.

Just as the prisoners at Andersonville, we must live as cleanly as possible, dwell in peace with our brethren, and have our tent-mates’ best interests at heart. We, too, need to keep our heads on a swivel because our adversary the Devil, like those godless raiders in the POW camp, is always seeking an opportunity to destroy God’s tent-dwellers and rob them of their inheritance (I Peter 5:8-9).

In Psalm 15:1, David asks, “LORD, who may abide in Your tabernacle? Who may dwell in Your holy hill?” The answer to this question appears in the psalm’s remaining verses as a list of “tent rules” for God’s people to follow. If we follow them, we will be prepared for eternal life, and not only that, as David writes, we “shall never be moved”—we will be rewarded with a fixed, eternal dwelling place! So God prepares us for life and rulership in His Kingdom.

Sarah’s Tent

Abraham was a type of God the Father, and Isaac, a type of His Son Jesus Christ. Abraham, believing the promises God had given him, looked forward to the time he would receive them, considering his years living in his temporary dwelling a small thing to endure. He reared Isaac to fear God, and he also dwelt in a tent, a temporary dwelling, for the rest of his life.

After the death of his wife, Abraham sent his servant to find a wife for Isaac (Genesis 24:1-4). The servant found Rebekah among their kinfolk in Haran and brought her back to Isaac in Canaan, Israel’s future Promised Land. When she arrived, Isaac immediately took her into his mother’s tent, and they became one in marriage (Genesis 24:67).

God the Father has called and chosen us as His own special people to become the bride of His Son. The Father is preparing us to dwell on His holy hill and enter His Son’s tent to become one with God! If, like Abraham and Moses, we see this as our divinely promised future, is there anything we would not leave behind to reach it? Are there any “tent rules” we would not keep to prepare for it?

So, like Abraham, we look forward to a holy, eternal city, New Jerusalem, which will descend from heaven after the final judgment. Even so, a voice from heaven describes that event in “tent terms” in Revelation 21:3: “Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell among them, and they shall be His people. God Himself will be with them and be their God.” At that time, God’s purpose fulfilled, we will dwell with Him, not in a goat-hair tent, as comfortable and ornate as they may have been, but in His glorious, many-roomed house forever (John 14:2)!