Gold in the Mishkan Baer says: as couples.

The holiness of
Menachem Leibtag shows1 that the
donations of silver were used
predominantly for the adanim, the planks
that formed the base of the Mishkan.
Silver used in the Mishkan was
collected, half a shekel per head, in the
census. So the underlying structure in
the Mishkan was literally from the
contribution of every man among the
Jewish people. The rest of the silver
formed the perimeter and crown of the
Mishkan, so that we can understand that
the Mishkan, G-d’s home on earth, was
contained within an outer structure
provided by all of klal yisroel.2
But silver was not used for the keilim of
the Mishkan itself. On the contrary; gold
and copper were used for the aron,
shulchan, menorah, etc., and of the two
of them, gold was clearly the holier, the
higher material. Our sages tell us that,
"Gold was created only so that it should
be used for the Mishkan."
building the Mishkan was provided by
married couples, volunteering their
personal, even intimate jewelry of
bracelets, nose-rings, rings, and body
ornaments. These couples, by sharing
their gold, were in effect sharing their
personal connections to the shechinah, to
the holiness they had nurtured in their
personal relationships with each other.
G-d’s home was built by the contribution
from married Jewish couples.
Why is gold singularly important, that
we can argue that it alone was created
solely for G-d’s home? Gold is the noble
metal; a material that does not
chemically bind with any other. It, like
the shechinah, and like the love within a
marriage, can exist within our world in a
pure form, without being contaminated
by its surroundings. Both gold and
marital bliss are a proxy for Hashem’s
presence, where even small quantities of
this rare and pure element beautify and
adorn any environment.

But gold did not come from an imposed

tax, nor did it come from any kind of Isaiah Cox
national treasury. On the contrary, 21 March 2009
“vayavo ha-anashim al hanashim”3, “The
men and women came,” which Rashi
understands as “im hanashim”—“the
men came with the women.” When
volunteering gold jewelry for the
building of the Mishkan, men and
women came with each other, as Simcha
1
http://www.tanach.org/special/shkalim.txt
2
Leibtag writes: One viewing the Mishkan form afar,
would see the silver coating on the very top of each of
the poles of the courtyard ["amudei ha'chatzer"], and
on the hooks connecting the curtains to these poles.
This detail created a silver like 'perimeter', that may
have appeared like a silver crown surrounding the
Mishkan. This 'crown', just like its 'base', was made
from this 'everyone is equal' donation of the silver
from the "machazit ha'shekel".
3
Shmos, 35:22