What Does Exodus 25:5 Mean?
And rams' skins reddened, and badgers' skins, and shittim wood,
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And rams’ skins dyed red, and badgers’ skins, and shittim wood,THE KEY
The Hebrew word for “dyed red” shares its root with “human” and “ground,” joining the covering to the human being and the soil.
THE MEANING
The verse names a red-dyed ram hide, another animal hide, and acacia wood among the materials for the dwelling. Hide and wood each have a place in its making, keeping sacred space grounded in material things.
THE ROOT
מְאָדָּמִים
məʾoddāmîm
GROWS FROM
אדם
to be red; redness
“reddened” in this verse is məʾoddāmîm. The red in this list belongs to the Hebrew consonantal family א־ד־ם. That same family appears in ʾādām (אָדָם, human) and ʾădāmāh (אֲדָמָה, ground), connections English does not carry between “red,” “human,” and “ground.”
ALSO GROWS
ʾādōm: red
אָדֹם
This is the color word from the same root, naming the hue of the ram hides.
ʾādām: human; person
אָדָם
It shares the root consonants with “dyed red,” making the human part of the same Hebrew word-family.
ʾădāmāh: ground; soil
אֲדָמָה
It shares the root consonants and brings the human and the red color into a word-family that also names the ground.
THE PATTERN
A dwelling takes shape when distinct materials and parts each find a place in the whole.
And you shall make a covering for the tent of rams' skins dyed red, and a covering above of badgers' skins.And every man with whom was found blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine linen, and goats' hair, and reddened skins of rams, and badgers' skins, brought them.You also, as living stones, are built up into a house of breath, a set-apart priesthood, to carry up sacrifices of breath, well received by God through Jesus, the Anointed One.THE THREAD
And the LORD God shaped the ground-being, Adam, from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and Adam became a living soul.The Hebrew for “human,” אָדָם (ʾādām), and “ground,” אֲדָמָה (ʾădāmāh), share the consonants א־ד־ם with the word for “red,” אָדֹם (ʾādōm). Genesis makes that hidden word-family visible: the red in this verse echoes both the human and the ground.
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