What Does Exodus 38:13 Mean?
And on the east side, toward the front, fifty forearms.
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 for the east side eastward fifty cubits.THE KEY
The verse names the same edge twice, once as the front and once as the sunrise, so east is both the enclosure’s orientation and where light appears.
THE MEANING
The eastern edge is fifty cubits, with its direction named as both the front and the sunrise. The verse gives the boundary a clear span and orientation; it is not an anonymous line.
THE ROOT
קֵדְמָה
qēdmāh
GROWS FROM
קדם
To be in front, precede, or come before; the word also means east, the direction of the rising sun.
“toward the front” in this verse is qēdmāh. The first word translated as east carries the sense of the front or what comes before. This edge is oriented toward what lies ahead, as well as toward the sunrise named by the next word.
ALSO GROWS
qedem: East; what is in front; former times or antiquity
קֶדֶם
It holds direction and what came before in the same word family, deepening the verse’s sense of east as the front.
qadam: To go before, precede, or meet
קָדַם
This branch echoes the forward-facing sense in the verse’s designation of the eastern side.
מִזְרָחָה
mizrāḥāh
GROWS FROM
זרח
To rise or shine, especially as the sun rises.
“toward the front” in this verse is mizrāḥāh. The second word translated as eastward names the direction by what happens there: light rises. The two Hebrew terms give this side both a position, the front, and an event, the sunrise.
ALSO GROWS
zarach: To rise or shine, as the sun does
זָרַח
This verb reveals the rising light inside the verse’s directional word.
mizrach: Sunrise; the east
מִזְרָח
This noun makes the link between east and the sun’s rising explicit.
THE PATTERN
Sacred dwelling places are given visible orientation and defined boundaries.
And the width of the enclosure, on the front edge, eastward, shall be fifty forearms.Then he came to the gate that faces the sunrise, and climbed its rising steps, and measured the threshold of the gate, one reed wide, and the other threshold of the gate, one reed wide.From the rising, three gates, and from the north, three gates, and from the south, three gates, and from the setting, three gates.THE THREAD
And the LORD God planted a garden eastward, in Eden, and there he set Adam, whom he had shaped.The same קדם (q-d-m) root places the garden eastward and names this measured side by the sense of east or front. The tabernacle’s boundary carries a spatial echo of the garden’s orientation.
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