What Does Exodus 35:7 Mean?
And reddened rams' skins, and badgers' skins, and acacia wood.
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 rams’ skins dyed red, and badgers’ skins, and shittim wood,THE KEY
The red covering shares its Hebrew consonants with the human and the ground, so the sanctuary is made from the very world it holds sacred.
THE MEANING
The sacred dwelling takes shape through material from the living world: ram skins, other hides, and acacia wood. The red-dyed covering echoes the consonants of adam, the human, and adamah, the ground, binding what is set apart to earth-born life.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This verse undoes the idea that what is set apart must be made from something other than ordinary matter: animal hides and desert timber belong to the sacred dwelling.
THE ROOT
מְאָדָּמִים
me'oddamim
GROWS FROM
א־ד־ם
ʾ-d-m
Be red; the color red.
“reddened” in this verse is me'oddamim. The Hebrew for dyed red carries the אדם consonants also found in adam, human, and adamah, ground. Their shared sound lets red, earth, and human life echo together: the covering belongs to the same material world as the people and the ground.
ALSO GROWS
adam: Human being.
אָדָם
Its consonants echo in the word for red, connecting the covering’s color with earth-born human life.
adamah: Ground, soil.
אֲדָמָה
Its shared consonants bring the ground into the verse’s red coloring, linking the sanctuary’s materials to the earth.
THE PATTERN
A dwelling for God takes form through tangible material from the living world.
Speak to the children of Israel, that they bring me a lifted offering. From every man whose heart stirs him to give, you take my lifted offering.Then the people rejoiced, for they offered willingly, because with a whole heart they offered willingly to the LORD, and David the king also rejoiced with great joy.You also, as living stones, are built up into a house of breath, a set-apart priesthood, to carry up sacrifices of breath, well received by God through Jesus, the Anointed One.THE THREAD
And the LORD God shaped the ground-being, Adam, from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and Adam became a living soul.The red word in Exodus shares the consonants of adam, human, and adamah, ground, the word pair Genesis places together when describing the human formed from soil. That echo ties the sanctuary’s materials to the earth-born life the verse describes.
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