The Rings and Staves

And two golden rings shalt thou make to it under the crown of it, by the two ribs thereof (margin); upon the two sides of it shalt thou make it; and they shall be for places for the staves to bear it withal. And thou shalt make the staves of shittim wood, and overlay them with gold. (Ver. 4, 5.) The Hebrew word translated in the text “corners,” and in the margin “ribs,” is the same word which occurs in chapter 27: 7, and which is there rendered “sides” — “and the staves shall be upon the two sides of the altar to bear it,”—which gives the sense. Translating the word “corners,” here and in chapter 37., only, is apt to mislead. It signifies a side, or, as in the present instance, an appendage to a side.
In the table of shewbread, the rings and staves were connected with the border (chapter 25, 26, 27), to teach us that in traveling through a polluted world, separation from evil ought to characterize our communion. But in the golden altar the rings and staves are connected with the crown of gold, for, though strangers and pilgrims here, we worship in connection with an ascended and glorified Savior.
The rings and staves adapted the altar to the wilderness condition of Israel; they were “to bear it withal,” that it might accompany them in their various journeyings. So Jesus, in the character in which he is presented to us by the golden altar, is ever present with us in Spirit wherever two or three are gathered in his name. And both his humanity and his Deity adapt him to our wilderness necessities.