What Does Exodus 35:15 Mean?
And the altar of smoke, and its poles, and the oil of smearing, and the smoke of spices, and the screen at the opening of the dwelling.
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 the incense altar, and his staves, and the anointing oil, and the sweet incense, and the hanging for the door at the entering in of the tabernacle,THE KEY
The word for the sanctuary’s entrance grows from the same Hebrew root as “open,” so even its screened threshold is named as an opening.
THE MEANING
Your inward meeting place is pictured as an ordered space: what can be carried, what marks it as set apart, what rises, and what screens the entrance belong together. Its threshold is both covered and named with the Hebrew word for an opening.
THE ROOT
פֶּתַח
petaḥ
GROWS FROM
פתח
p-t-ḥ
To open or open up; petach is an opening or entrance.
The verse calls it the “screen of the opening at the opening” (masak ha-petaḥ le-petaḥ ha-mishkan). English can make an entrance sound like a fixed object, while the Hebrew keeps the action of opening alive inside the word.
ALSO GROWS
pataḥ: To open.
פָּתַח
This verb shares the entrance’s root and makes explicit the opening already carried in its name.
petaḥ: An opening, entrance, or doorway.
פֶּתַח
This is the word used for the sanctuary’s threshold, naming it as a passage.
הַמִּשְׁחָה
ha-mishḥāh
GROWS FROM
משח
m-sh-ḥ
To smear or anoint.
“oil of smearing” in this verse is ha-mishḥāh. The oil is named for the act performed with it, and the same root names the anointed one. In this list, consecration belongs alongside the incense and the threshold as part of the prepared meeting place.
ALSO GROWS
māshaḥ: To smear or anoint.
מָשַׁח
This is the action named by the oil of anointing.
māshiaḥ: Anointed one; Messiah.
מָשִׁיחַ
The same root links the oil’s act of anointing with the person marked by that act.
קְטֹרֶת
qetoret
GROWS FROM
קטר
q-t-r
To burn incense or send up smoke.
“altar of smoke” in this verse is qetoret. The Hebrew word carries the action of making smoke, so the incense is more than fragrance: it is what rises. That rising quality sits beside the opening and the anointing in the sanctuary’s ordered space.
ALSO GROWS
qāṭar: To burn incense or make smoke rise.
קָטַר
This verb names the action contained in qetoret.
qīṭōr: Smoke or vapor.
קִיטֹר
This related noun makes visible the rising movement held within the word for incense.
THE PATTERN
A place of meeting is made reachable through an appointed threshold.
And you shall make a hanging for the door of the tent, of blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine twined linen, wrought with needlework.I am the door. Through me, if anyone enters, he shall be delivered, and shall go in and out, and shall find pasture.Having therefore, brothers, open speech for entering the set-apart places by the blood of Jesus,THE THREAD
I will set the key of the house of David upon his shoulder, and he will open, and none will shut. He will shut, and none will open.Exodus names the entrance פֶּתַח (petaḥ, “opening”), while Isaiah uses פָּתַח (pātaḥ, “to open”). The shared root links the doorway with the action of opening, keeping passage present within the name of the screened threshold.
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