What Does Exodus 30:2 Mean?
A forearm shall be its length, and a forearm its breadth; four-cornered shall it be, and two forearms its height; its horns shall rise from it.
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
A cubit shall be the length thereof, and a cubit the breadth thereof; foursquare shall it be: and two cubits shall be the height thereof: the horns thereof shall be of the same.THE KEY
The altar’s horns are “from it”: what rises beyond its square base belongs to the altar’s own body.
THE MEANING
The altar stands on a one-cubit square and rises two cubits; its horns come from the same body. Its upward reach is part of its form, not a separate structure.
THE ROOT
קַרְנֹתָיו
qarnotav
GROWS FROM
קרן
q-r-n
The word family centers on a horn or projecting point; as a verb, it describes rays shining outward.
The Hebrew noun for the altar’s horns belongs to the same root family as a verb for shining or radiating. English separates these images, while the Hebrew lets a horn and a ray echo as forms that project outward.
ALSO GROWS
qeren: horn; also a projecting point, ray, or emblem of strength
קֶרֶן
The altar’s horns are literal projections, while the same noun can describe a ray; both make outward extension visible.
qaran: to shine or emit rays
קָרַן
In Exodus 34:29, this verb describes Moses’ face shining, extending the root’s image from a crafted horn to radiance emerging from a face.
THE PATTERN
The q-r-n word family gives outward projection a shared image: a horn, strength, or rays emerge visibly from a source.
You shall make its horns upon its four corners, rising out of it, and you shall sheathe it with bronze.And it came to be, when Moses went down from mount Sinai with the two tablets of testimony in Moses' hand, when he went down from the mountain, that Moses did not perceive that the skin of his face sent out horns while he spoke with him.All the horns of the wicked I cut off; but the horns of the aligned one are lifted high.THE THREAD
And it came to be, when Moses went down from mount Sinai with the two tablets of testimony in Moses' hand, when he went down from the mountain, that Moses did not perceive that the skin of his face sent out horns while he spoke with him.The altar’s “horns” and the verb translated “shone” share the consonants ק־ר־ן. One is a crafted projection; the other is radiance from a face, and the root lets both images illuminate what projects from the altar.
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