What Does Exodus 39:8 Mean in the King James?
And he made the breastplate of cunning work, like the work of the ephod; of gold, blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine twined linen.
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 breastpiece’s “cunning work” is thought made visible: a design is woven into what rests over the heart.
THE MEANING
The breastpiece takes shape as a designed whole, its gold, blue, purple, scarlet, and fine linen brought together by skilled thought. What rests over the heart is a deliberate pattern, formed strand by strand.
THE ROOT
מַעֲשֵׂה חֹשֵׁב
maʿaseh ḥōshēv
GROWS FROM
חשב
To think, devise, plan, or reckon.
“cunning work” in this verse is maʿaseh ḥōshēv. The Hebrew phrase means “work of a designer”: the craft carries the sense of thought worked into a pattern. English “cunning” can sound like mere cleverness, while the root joins planning with making.
ALSO GROWS
ḥāshav: To think, devise, plan, or reckon.
חָשַׁב
The root spans thought and design, showing that the breastpiece’s skilled work begins in a conceived pattern.
maḥashavah: Thought, plan, or design.
מַחֲשָׁבָה
This branch names the thought behind an arrangement, linking the visible weaving to the design that shapes it.
THE PATTERN
Thought takes visible form through skilled making, with many parts shaped into one coherent work.
Them hath he filled with wisdom of heart, to work all manner of work, of the engraver, and of the cunning workman, and of the embroiderer, in blue, and in purple, in scarlet, and in fine linen, and of the weaver, even of them that do any work, and of those that devise cunning work.My substance was not hid from thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.THE THREAD
Them hath he filled with wisdom of heart, to work all manner of work, of the engraver, and of the cunning workman, and of the embroiderer, in blue, and in purple, in scarlet, and in fine linen, and of the weaver, even of them that do any work, and of those that devise cunning work.The same חשב root appears in “cunning workman” and “devise cunning work,” naming both the thought that plans a pattern and the skill that makes it. This opens the breastpiece as deliberate composition, where the design is carried into the material.
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