The fourth and outer covering of the tabernacle was made from badgers' skins:  "Make for the tent a covering of rams skins dyed red, and over that a covering of badgers' skins" (Exodus 26:14).

These badgers' skins had no colorful beauty; they were drab, dull and bluish gray.  The outer covering was exposed to the sun and the rain and the storms and elements continually.  It was the only covering visible to the outsider, and had nothing appealing about it at all.

This is a perfect picture of the humanity of Jesus, and that which alone is visible to the outsider before he enters in at the Door.  This is all that the world, the unbeliever, the unregenerate man can possibly see of Jesus.  Only those who pass through the door and by the altar, and into the tabernacle itself can see the beauty inside.  But the man on the outside only sees a rectangular building, draped under a coarse, dull leather covering, which held no attraction.  It's the picture of Jesus in His Humanity as He walked here on the earth, as the Sin-bearer of men, His deity veiled by His humanity.  Isaiah said of Jesus, as symbolized by these badgers' skins:  "He had no beauty of majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.  He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering.  Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not" (Isaiah 53:2-3).

The badgers' skins represent all that the world can see in the person of Jesus until they have been born again.  They are still on the outside where the winds tear, the rain pelts, the sun bakes, and the frost bites.  It is the exposed portion of the tabernacle that they are able to see.  It's a picture of the human body of Jesus, in which He bore our sins on the tree.  It was in this body that the storms of human hate placed a crown of thorns on His head.  It was this body that they spit upon, struck, slapped and scourged.  In this body, the nails pierced His hands and feet, and the blood gushed forth.  This is the meaning of the badgers' skins.