Exodus 33 · a question people ask
What was this tent, if the tabernacle wasn't built yet?
Moses "called it “The Tent of Meeting.”" (33:7), and "Moses used to take the tent and pitch it outside the camp" (33:7). On the mountain the LORD had shown Moses the pattern of a tabernacle (25:9), also called the Tent of Meeting (29:42-44). That one wasn't built yet: it is made in chapter 36 (36:8), and "In the first month in the second year, on the first day of the month, the tabernacle was raised up" (40:17). The chapter doesn't say where this tent came from. It does say where it stood: "outside the camp, far away from the camp" (33:7). In Numbers, the tribes "shall encamp around the Tent of Meeting at a distance from it" (Numbers 2:2).
The verses
“Now Moses used to take the tent and pitch it outside the camp, far away from the camp, and he called it “The Tent of Meeting.” Everyone who sought the LORD went out to the Tent of Meeting, which was outside the camp.”
“Let them make me a sanctuary, that I may dwell among them. According to all that I show you, the pattern of the tabernacle, and the pattern of all of its furniture, even so you shall make it.”
“It shall be a continual burnt offering throughout your generations at the door of the Tent of Meeting before the LORD, where I will meet with you, to speak there to you. There I will meet with the children of Israel; and the place shall be sanctified by my glory. I will sanctify the Tent of Meeting and the altar. I will also sanctify Aaron and his sons to minister to me in the priest’s office.”
“All the wise-hearted men among those who did the work made the tabernacle with ten curtains of fine twined linen, blue, purple, and scarlet. They made them with cherubim, the work of a skillful workman.”