What Does Exodus 36:37 Mean?
And he made a hanging for the opening of the dwelling, of blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine twisted linen, of needlework.
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 he made an hanging for the tabernacle door of blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine twined linen, of needlework;THE KEY
The tabernacle’s “door” is an opening (פֶּתַח, petach, “entrance”) veiled by a woven screen: the covering does not erase the way in.
THE MEANING
The sacred is pictured as a real opening, carefully marked by a screen. The word for “door,” פֶּתַח (petach, “entrance” or “opening”), grows from a root meaning “to open,” holding access and covering together. The threshold remains an opening even while it is veiled.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a veil means there is no way in: the hanging is placed at an entrance, not where an entrance is absent.
THE ROOT
פֶּתַח
petach
GROWS FROM
פתח
To open; to make an opening.
English “door” can make us picture a barrier, but פֶּתַח (petach, “entrance” or “opening”) names the passage itself. The hanging stands across that opening without turning it into a wall, holding a real threshold and a real covering in one image.
ALSO GROWS
pataḥ: To open.
פָּתַח
This verb names the action carried in פֶּתַח (petach, “opening”): the entrance is an opening made available.
mafteaḥ: Key.
מַפְתֵּחַ
The key and the entrance share the opening-root: one opens, the other is the opening.
THE PATTERN
The way into encounter is pictured as a real opening marked by a threshold.
Open to me the gates of alignment; I enter them, and I extend my hands to the LORD.I am the door. Through me, if anyone enters, he shall be delivered, and shall go in and out, and shall find pasture.A fresh and living way that he opened anew for us through the hanging curtain of his flesh;THE THREAD
Open to me the gates of alignment; I enter them, and I extend my hands to the LORD.The verb פִּתְחוּ (pitḥu, “open!”) grows from פתח (p-t-ḥ, “to open”), the same root carried by פֶּתַח (petach, “entrance” or “opening”) here. Exodus shows the opening clothed by a screen; the psalm voices what that opening makes possible: entry.
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