What Does Exodus 31:7 Mean?
The tent of meeting, and the ark of the witness, and covering that is upon it, and all the vessels of the tent.
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
The tabernacle of the congregation, and the ark of the testimony, and the mercy seat that is thereupon, and all the furniture of the tabernacle,THE KEY
The mercy seat is the covering at the center of the meeting place, gathering encounter above testimony and under cover.
THE MEANING
The verse presents a whole meeting place: testimony held in an ark, a covering above it, and the vessels of the dwelling around it. Encounter is pictured as ordered and centered on testimony beneath a covering.
THE ROOT
כַּפֹּרֶת
kappōret covering
GROWS FROM
כ־פ־ר
k-p-r
Cover, cover over.
The Hebrew name for the mercy seat is built from the root for covering. The English phrase can sound like a title, while the root also reveals the object’s function: it is the cover above the testimony-bearing ark.
ALSO GROWS
kippurim: Coverings; traditionally rendered “atonements.”
כִּפֻּרִים
The shared root keeps the image of covering present in the language of atonement, deepening what the covering above the ark signifies.
kōfer: A covering price or ransom.
כֹּפֶר
Here too the root carries the sense of something that covers; at the ark, the kappōret is the literal cover over the testimony.
מוֹעֵד
moʿēd appointed meeting
GROWS FROM
י־ע־ד
y-ʿ-d
Appoint, designate, set a meeting.
The Hebrew expression behind “tabernacle of the congregation” is ohel moed, “tent of meeting.” The place is named for the appointed encounter it holds, not only for the people gathered there.
ALSO GROWS
yaʿad: To appoint or designate.
יָעַד
The verb shows the appointed quality carried by the meeting place’s name.
moʿadim: Appointed times or festivals.
מוֹעֲדִים
The same root names set times of meeting as well as this tent, linking encounter to both place and appointed time.
THE PATTERN
Scripture locates encounter in an ordered center where testimony is held beneath a covering.
And there I meet with you, and I speak with you from above the covering, from between the two cherubim that are upon the ark of the witness, all that I command you to the children of Israel.And the priests brought the ark of the covenant of the LORD into its place, into the innermost room of the house, into the most set-apart place, under the wings of the cherubim.Above it are the cherubim of weight, casting their shade over the covering, about which we cannot now speak piece by piece.THE THREAD
And there I meet with you, and I speak with you from above the covering, from between the two cherubim that are upon the ark of the witness, all that I command you to the children of Israel.Exodus 31:7 names the covering above the testimony-bearing ark as part of the meeting place. Here the meeting and speech are expressly located from above that same mercy seat, revealing why the covering stands at the center of the list.
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