What Does Exodus 28:14 Mean?

And you will make two cords of pure gold at the ends, of braided work, and set the braided cords on the settings.

Exodus 28:14 · SDV

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.

This verse in the King James

King James wording

King James Version

And two chains of pure gold at the ends; of wreathen work shalt thou make them, and fasten the wreathen chains to the ouches.

THE KEY

Beauty is built into the bond: the pure gold is shaped into cordwork and placed where it secures the breastpiece.

THE MEANING

Two chains of pure gold are crafted as cords and set onto the breastpiece’s settings. The verse shows the link receiving the same care as the parts it holds together.

WHAT THIS UNDOES

It undoes the idea that adornment is only surface: here, the gold ornament also secures the assembly.

THE ROOT

עֲבֹת

avot

GROWS FROM

עבת

To interweave or twist into a cord.

“wreathen work” in this verse is avot. The word carries the image of cordwork: strands worked into a thick, connected form. The chain’s beauty is part of its construction as a bond.

ALSO GROWS

avat: To interweave or twist.

עָבַת

This verbal form shows the working together of strands that gives the chain its corded character.

avot: Cord, rope, or cable.

עֲבֹת

The same root names the cord itself, making the chain’s woven form part of how it joins the settings.

וְנָתַתָּה

ve-natattah

GROWS FROM

נתן

To give, put, or place.

“set” in this verse is ve-natattah. The verb translated “fasten” is formed from the root for placing. The connection is made by setting the chains onto the settings; the root’s range also holds the sense of giving something into place.

ALSO GROWS

natan: To give, put, or place.

נָתַן

This is the verb’s root form and carries the sense of setting something in position.

mattanah: Gift.

מַתָּנָה

The gift noun grows from the same root for giving; here that root describes placing the chains onto the settings.

טָהוֹר

tahor

GROWS FROM

טהר

To be clean or pure.

“pure” in this verse is tahor. Purity describes the gold itself, giving the linking material a named quality alongside its craft and placement. The root family includes both the state of cleanness and the act of cleansing.

ALSO GROWS

taher: To cleanse or purify.

טָהֵר

This verb shares the root with the word describing the gold’s pure state.

taharah: Cleanness or purity.

טָהֳרָה

This noun names the quality carried by the gold from which the chains are made.

THE PATTERN

Distinct parts hold together through carefully crafted links whose quality becomes part of the structure.

And they made upon the breastplate chains at its ends, braided of clean gold.

Exodus 39:15 · SDVThe design becomes a made object, with corded gold chains set on the breastplate.

And if one overpowers him, two will stand against him, and a threefold cord is not quickly torn.

Ecclesiastes 4:12 · SDVThe cord shows how joined strands form a bond with strength of its own.

from whom the whole body, joined together and knit by every joint that supplies, according to the working in the measure of each part, makes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love.

Ephesians 4:16 · SDVThe whole body grows through its joined parts and the work supplied at each connection.

THE THREAD

Let us tear their bonds apart, and throw their cords off us.

Psalm 2:3 · SDV

The Hebrew word for “cords” here shares the root behind the cordwork in Exodus. In one verse the cords secure the breastpiece; in the other, speakers name cords as bonds they want to cast away.

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