What Does Exodus 26:16 Mean?
Ten forearms shall be the length of a board, and a forearm and a half shall be the width of one board.
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
Ten cubits shall be the length of a board, and a cubit and a half shall be the breadth of one board.THE KEY
The Hebrew word for “breadth” comes from the root of becoming spacious: the sanctuary’s room takes shape one measured piece at a time.
THE MEANING
This verse gives each board a defined length and breadth, showing how a dwelling takes shape through pieces given their measure. Its word for breadth belongs to the root of becoming spacious, so room here is both bounded and made.
THE ROOT
רֹחַב
roḥav
GROWS FROM
רחב
r-ḥ-b
to become broad or spacious
“width” in this verse is roḥav. The noun for breadth grows from the verb for becoming wide. Here that spaciousness has an exact measure: room is shaped into a dwelling through its separate parts.
ALSO GROWS
raḥav: to become wide or spacious
רָחַב
The verb reveals the widening held within the board’s measured breadth.
merḥav: a broad or open place
מֶרְחָב
This noun uses the same root for spaciousness, linking the board’s width to the Bible’s language of being brought into a wide place.
THE PATTERN
A dwelling for presence takes shape as distinct parts receive their measure and are fitted into a whole.
And let them make me a set-apart place, that I may pitch my tent among them.And he made frames for the dwelling of acacia wood, standing up.In whom the whole building, joined at the joints, grows into a set-apart temple in the Lord.THE THREAD
From the narrow place I call out to the LORD, and the LORD answers me in a wide place.“Large place” translates מֶרְחָב (merḥav), meaning a broad or open place, from the same root רחב (r-ḥ-b), meaning to become spacious, as the board’s “breadth.” The measured board and the large place share the language of room made within bounds.
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