What Does Exodus 35:32 Mean?
And to devise designs, to work in gold, and in silver, and in bronze.
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 to devise curious works, to work in gold, and in silver, and in brass,THE KEY
The Hebrew says, in effect, “to design a design”: devising and the crafted pattern share one root.
THE MEANING
Here, design reaches toward gold, silver, and brass; thought and making move together. An inward pattern takes visible form in work the hands can shape.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that thought is abstract while skilled handwork is merely practical: this verse joins them in a single act of design.
THE ROOT
לַחְשֹׁב
laḥshov
GROWS FROM
חשב
ḥ-sh-b
to think through, devise, plan, or reckon
“devise designs” in this verse is laḥshov. The verse pairs לַחְשֹׁב (laḥshov, to devise) with מַחֲשָׁבֹת (machashavot, designs): the same root names both the act of conceiving a pattern and the pattern itself. English separates those into “devise” and “curious works,” while Hebrew lets thought and crafted design echo one another.
ALSO GROWS
machashavah: A thought, plan, or design
מַחֲשָׁבָה
The verse uses its plural form, מַחֲשָׁבֹת (machashavot, designs), beside the verb from the same root, joining the imagined pattern to the work made from it.
choshev: A designer or deviser
חֹשֵׁב
In Exodus 26:1, the related word appears in “cunning work,” describing patterned craft; the same root links the designer’s thought with a pattern worked into material.
THE PATTERN
Design becomes visible when an inward pattern is carried into material form.
Make for yourself an ark of gopher wood; make nests in the ark, and cover it within and without with pitch.He was a widow's son of the branch of Naphtali, and his father was a man of Tyre, a carver in bronze. And he was filled with craft, and with discernment, and with perception to work every work in bronze. And he came to king Solomon, and did all his work.For we are his making, created in the Anointed One, Jesus, for good works, which God prepared beforehand, so that in them we might walk.THE THREAD
Moreover you shall make the dwelling with ten curtains of fine twined linen, and blue, and purple, and scarlet; with cherubim of cunning work you shall make them.“Cunning work” translates מַעֲשֵׂה חֹשֵׁב (maʿaseh choshev, designer’s work), using the same חשב (ḥ-sh-b, devise or design) root as “devise” here. The root connects the conceived pattern with the patterned fabric made for the tabernacle.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us