The brazen laver was like a wash basin at which the priests used to wash before entering the tabernacle or presenting a sacrifice. It can be found in Exodus 30:18-21:
“Make a bronze basin, with its bronze stand, for washing. Place it between the tent of meeting and the altar and put water in it. Aaron and his sons are to wash their hands and feet with water from it. Whenever they enter the tent of meeting, they shall wash with water so that they will not die. Also when they approach the altar to minister by presenting a food offering to the Lord, they shall wash their hands and feet so that they will not die. This is to be a lasting ordinance for Aaron and his descendants for the generations to come.”
And in Exodus 38:8:
“They made the bronze basin and its bronze stand from the mirrors of the women who served at the entrance to the tent of meeting.”
The second item of furniture we come to in the outer court was the brazen laver. This laver was a place at which to wash and is a type or symbol of the Word. This similarity can be found in Ephesians 5:25-28: “Husbands love your wives, just as Christ loved the church, and gave Himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the Word, and to present her to Himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.”
In James 1 we see why the mirrors of the women at the tabernacle were used to create this laver. In James 1:22-25:
“Do not merely listen to the Word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the Word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it – not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it – they will be blessed in what they do.”
And so the laver encourages us to spend time studying the Word of God in order to bring about adjustments in our lives and allow it to change us. If we study the Word and then, as James said, be doers of the Word and not just hearers only, then we will be washed through the Word and sanctified.
