God filled Bezaleel with His Spirit to build with his hands. Ben asks what that means for the tools of our own day.
The Breath and the Machine
Chapter 9: What Bezaleel Knew
Jesus told a story about three servants and a master who went on a long journey. Before he left, he handed each of them something of value, according to his ability, and then he was gone a long time. Two of the servants put what they had been given to work. When the master came home, he said the same thing to both of them.
“His lord said unto him, Well done, thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord.” Matthew 25:21
The third servant dug a hole. He was not praised for caution. And notice the reason he gave, in his own words: “I was afraid, and went and hid thy talent in the earth” (Matthew 25:25). Fear was his stated defense, and it did not hold. He had something of value. He refused to use it. The master’s judgment was not gentle.
A book that only warns has failed. Scripture is not a book of warnings alone. It is a book of mandate and mission and stewardship, and stewardship means using what God has placed in your hand instead of burying it in a field because you were afraid.
AI is in your hand. The question is what you will do with it.
The Craftsman and the Spirit
There is a man in Exodus few Christians have ever considered in connection with technology. His name is Bezaleel.
“And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, See, I have called by name Bezaleel the son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah: And I have filled him with the spirit of God, in wisdom, and in understanding, and in knowledge, and in all manner of workmanship, To devise cunning works, to work in gold, and in silver, and in brass, And in cutting of stones, to set them, and in carving of timber, to work in all manner of workmanship.” Exodus 31:1-5
God filled Bezaleel with His Spirit. The same Spirit who moved over the waters in Genesis, who empowered the prophets, who raised Christ from the dead. And what did the Spirit empower him to do?
Craft. Not prophecy, not preaching, not miracles. Workmanship. Gold, silver, brass, stone, timber. The Spirit of God filled a man so that he could build something with his hands, and the Spirit did not merely tolerate the skill. The Spirit produced it.
His name says the same thing. Bezaleel means in the shadow of God, under His protection, the same image the psalmist uses when he writes that the man who dwells in the secret place of the most High “shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty” (Psalm 91:1).1 The man who built the dwelling place of God bore a name that said he stood in God’s shade while he worked.
Somewhere along the way the church developed an instinct that spiritual things and technical things belong in separate categories, that the Spirit works in prayer and preaching but not in the workshop, that tools are secular and faith is sacred and the two do not touch.
Bezaleel dismantles that. God called him by name, filled him with the Spirit, pointed him at a construction project, and said build. The tabernacle, the dwelling place of God among His people, was not built by angels. It was built by a Spirit-filled craftsman using the most sophisticated tools and techniques available to him. And he was not alone in it. God gave him Aholiab and put wisdom in the hearts of every man who was wise hearted, filling a whole shop of engravers and weavers and embroiderers to do the work (Exodus 31:6, 35:35).
If the Spirit of God can fill a man for metalwork and stonecutting, He can fill a man for the wise use of artificial intelligence. The category is the same: skilled work under divine authority, using the tools of the age to build something that serves God’s purposes.
The issue was never the tool. It was who held it, and under Whose authority.
Josh Daws, who makes films with these tools, made the same observation from inside the craft. He argued that the work before and after the cameras on an AI-generated film is no different than on a traditional one.2 Live action, hand-drawn animation, computer graphics, stop motion, AI generation: the means of production changes, but the work does not become a different species of work. Bezaleel would have understood the distinction. He was not the first man to carve timber. He was the first man Scripture names as filled with the Spirit of God in order to do it well.
(Continued in the book.)
Notes
1 The name itself carries the argument. Bezaleel (Heb. בְּצַלְאֵל) means “in the shadow, or under the protection, of God,” a construction compared by lexicographers to the Akkadian ina-ṣilli-Bēl, “in the shadow of Bel.” See Encyclopaedia Judaica, “Bezalel,” https://jewishvirtuallibrary.org/bezalel, which notes the parallel to Psalm 91:1, and https://www.abarim-publications.com/Meaning/Bezalel.html on the underlying elements.
2 Josh Daws (@JoshDaws), X, May 31, 2026, https://x.com/JoshDaws/status/2061091667961090074. Daws is an AI filmmaker and VP of Technology at TheBlaze (Blaze Media); the post is a reply disagreeing with someone who had drawn a sharper line between AI work and traditional filmmaking.
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Excerpted from The Breath and the Machine by Ben Everson.