What Does Exodus 39:24 Mean?

And they made upon the hems of the robe pomegranates of blue, and purple, and scarlet, and twisted linen.

Exodus 39:24 · SDV

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.

This verse in the King James

King James wording

King James Version

And they made upon the hems of the robe pomegranates of blue, and purple, and scarlet, and twined linen.

THE KEY

Hebrew names the robe’s decorated hem with the same word Isaiah uses for the train that fills the temple, so the garment’s edge carries a word for sacred expanse.

THE MEANING

You meet the sacred at the edge as much as in the center: pomegranates pattern the robe’s hem in blue, purple, scarlet, and twined linen. Hebrew uses this hem-word again for the robe-train filling the temple, joining a small border to an expanse.

WHAT THIS UNDOES

The edge of what is sacred is incidental; here it receives the pomegranates, and its Hebrew name also speaks of a robe’s temple-filling reach.

THE ROOT

שׁוּלֵי

shulei

GROWS FROM

שׁוּל

Hem, skirt, or the trailing edge of a garment; by extension, a robe’s train.

“hems” in this verse is shulei. The Hebrew word for this decorated edge also names the train of a robe. English gives those forms different names, while Hebrew lets the hem here echo a garment whose reach fills the temple.

ALSO GROWS

shulei: Hems or edges of a garment

שׁוּלֵי

This is the word used for the robe’s border where the pomegranates are placed.

shulav: His train or hem

שׁוּלָיו

Isaiah uses this form for the robe-train that fills the temple, extending the word’s reach from a garment’s edge to sacred space.

THE PATTERN

The pomegranate carries signs of abundant life from the land into sacred architecture and the beloved’s face.

A land of wheat, and barley, and vines, and fig trees, and pomegranates; a land of olive oil, and honey.

Deuteronomy 8:8 · SDVThe pomegranate appears among the land’s produce, linking the fruit on the robe to the abundance of the land.

And he made the pillars, and two rows round about upon the one netting, to cover the crowns that were upon the top, with pomegranates. And so he did for the other crown.

1 Kings 7:18 · SDVPomegranates pattern the temple pillars, carrying the fruit’s image into sacred architecture.

Your lips are like a thread of scarlet, and your mouth is lovely; your temples are like a pomegranate split open behind your veil.

Song of Solomon 4:3 · SDVThe pomegranate becomes an image of beauty in the beloved’s face, as it does here on the robe’s edge.

THE THREAD

In the year that king Uzziah died, I saw the Lord settled upon a throne, high and lifted up, and the hem of his robe filled the temple.

Isaiah 6:1 · SDV

Exodus calls the garment’s hem shulei; Isaiah calls the robe’s train shulav, using the same Hebrew word family. The train fills the temple, revealing that the word on the robe’s edge can also name the robe’s full reach.

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