What Does Exodus 28:39 Mean?
And you will interlace the tunic of fine linen, and you will make the turban of fine linen, and you will make the sash of stitched work.
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 thou shalt embroider the coat of fine linen, and thou shalt make the mitre of fine linen, and thou shalt make the girdle of needlework.THE KEY
The Hebrew craft-word for this sash’s needlework is also used for the body’s hidden formation: the body itself is described as embroidered.
THE MEANING
The tunic, headpiece, and sash each carry a distinct kind of making: patterned work, wrapping, and embroidery. The verse holds the visible covering and the skilled work that shapes it together.
THE ROOT
מַעֲשֵׂה רֹקֵם
ma'aseh roqem
GROWS FROM
ר־ק־ם
To embroider: to create patterned work by stitching.
“stitched work” in this verse is ma'aseh roqem. The sash is called the “work of an embroiderer,” and Psalm 139:15 uses this same root for being “curiously wrought” in secret. One Hebrew craft-root names both the patterned covering and the body’s hidden formation.
ALSO GROWS
roqem: Embroiderer; one who makes embroidered work.
רֹקֵם
This is the craft-word in the verse’s phrase for the sash’s needlework.
ruqqamti: “I was embroidered” or “I was intricately wrought” (Psalm 139:15).
רֻקַּמְתִּי
The same root describes the speaker’s formation in secret, connecting embroidered cloth with the body’s hidden making.
riqmah: Embroidery or embroidered work (Ezekiel 16:10).
רִקְמָה
This form names an embroidered covering, another place where the root’s patterned work appears on the body.
THE PATTERN
Clothing in Scripture can carry skilled work that makes an inner formation visible on the body.
My bones are not hidden from you, as I am made in the hiding place, and embroidered in the lowest depths of the earth.I clothed you with embroidered work, and shod you in badger skin, and I girded you about with fine linen, and I covered you with silk.And it is given to her to be wrapped in fine linen, bright and clean, for the fine linen is the alignments of the set-apart ones.THE THREAD
My bones are not hidden from you, as I am made in the hiding place, and embroidered in the lowest depths of the earth.Psalm 139:15 uses the same root ר־ק־ם (r-q-m; rāqam), “to embroider,” for the speaker’s formation in secret. The root links the patterned sash at the body’s waist with the hidden shaping of the body itself.
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