Some have taken the name Bezalel to mean “in the shadow of God” (bl ’l). To me it also intimates “in the image of God” (belem ’lhîm) from the creation story (Gen 1:27). (On the absence of the letter mem, compare the name Noah being related to the root nm, and the name Samuel being related to the root ’l. See the comment on Gen 5:29.) And Bezalel is filled with the “spirit of God,” which also comes from the creation story (1:2). The allusions to creation are attractive because Bezalel, after all, as the great artist of the Torah, is the creative one, who fashions the Tabernacle and its
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