What Does Exodus 26:36 Mean in the King James?
And thou shalt make an hanging for the door of the tent, of blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine twined linen, wrought with needlework.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
The doorway is not bare access: its threshold is made as a worked screen.
THE MEANING
The verse places a crafted boundary at the entrance: passage is real, yet framed by a hanging. Access and covering stand together; the threshold is visible, colored, and worked rather than blank.
THE ROOT
פֶּתַח
petaḥ
GROWS FROM
פ-ת-ח
p-t-ḥ
To open or make an opening.
The word translated “door” is also the word for an opening, from the verb “to open.” The entrance carries passage in its name even as a hanging screens it: an opening can be real and covered at once.
ALSO GROWS
pāṯaḥ: To open.
פָּתַח
The verb names the action held inside the entrance noun: making a way through.
maphtēaḥ: Key.
מַפְתֵּחַ
The word for a key comes from the same opening-root, linking the entrance with what opens it.
מַעֲשֵׂה רֹקֵם
ma'aseh roqem
GROWS FROM
ר-ק-ם
r-q-m
To embroider or work in color.
“needlework” in this verse is ma'aseh roqem. The hanging’s surface is deliberately worked in color; the Hebrew points to embroidery, not merely a barrier. The entrance is shaped by craft, its boundary carrying visible form.
ALSO GROWS
raqam: To embroider, work in color.
רָקַם
The verb names the making that gives the entrance screen its patterned surface.
riqmah: Embroidered work, embroidery.
רִקְמָה
This related noun makes clear that the screen is a crafted textile, not an unworked covering.
THE PATTERN
A threshold to set-apart space marks a boundary while giving entry a distinct form.
And thou shalt hang up the vail under the taches, that thou mayest bring in thither within the vail the ark of the testimony: and the vail shall divide unto you between the holy place and the most holy.I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture.By a new and living way, which he hath consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, his flesh;THE THREAD
And for the gate of the court shall be an hanging of twenty cubits, of blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine twined linen, wrought with needlework: and their pillars shall be four, and their sockets four.Exodus 27:16 uses the same phrase מַעֲשֵׂה רֹקֵם (ma’aseh roqem, embroider’s work) for the court gate’s hanging. The repeated root places the same crafted threshold at the tent entrance and the outer court gate.
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