The Levite accounts – P’kudei
P’kudei begins, “These are the accounts of the sanctuary… the work of the Levites by the hand of Itamar the son of Aaron the high priest” (Ex.35:21-23).
We wonder why the Torah does not stick to the subject of accounting and introduces an apparently irrelevancy.
Abravanel asks this question in his commentary. He answers that Itamar was an expert in assessing costs and accounts and he led a team of Levites in working out and summing up the effort and expenses involved in constructing the mishkan.
They realised that there might be ways of siphoning off some of the valuables donated to the project and the method of checking and reporting the figures had to be totally true and honest.
