translation_id: net-engnet

book_id: EXO

label: NET translator note

text: The article on this word identifies this as the altar, meaning the main high altar on which the sacrifices would be made.


text: The dimensions are five cubits by five cubits by three cubits high.


text: Heb “four”; this refers to four sides. S. R. Driver says this is an archaism that means there were four equal sides ( Exodus , 291).


text: Heb “and three cubits its height.”


text: The text has “to all its vessels.” This is the lamed ( ל ) of inclusion according to Gesenius, meaning “all its utensils” (GKC 458 §143. e ).


text: The noun מִכְבָּר ( mikhbar ) means “a grating”; it is related to the word that means a “sieve.” This formed a vertical support for the ledge, resting on the ground and supporting its outer edge (S. R. Driver, Exodus , 292).


text: The verb is the verb “to be,” here the perfect tense with vav ( ו ) consecutive. It is “and it will be” or “that it may be,” or here “that it may come” halfway up.


text: Heb “to the half of the altar.”


text: The verb is a Hophal perfect with vav consecutive: וְהוּבָא ( vÿhuva ’, “and it will be brought”). The particle אֶת (’ et ) here introduces the subject of the passive verb (see a similar use in 21:28 , “and its flesh will not be eaten”).


text: The construction is the infinitive construct with bet ( ב ) preposition: “in carrying it.” Here the meaning must be that the poles are not left in the rings, but only put into the rings when they carried it.


text: The verb is used impersonally; it reads “just as he showed you.” This form then can be made a passive in the translation.


text: Heb “thus they will make.” Here too it could be given a passive translation since the subject is not expressed. But “they” would normally refer to the people who will be making this and so can be retained in the translation. sn Nothing is said about the top of the altar. Some commentators suggest, in view of the previous instruction for making an altar out of earth and stone, that when this one was to be used it would be filled up with dirt clods and the animal burnt on the top of that. If the animal was burnt inside it, the wood would quickly burn. A number of recent scholars think this was simply an imagined plan to make a portable altar after the pattern of Solomon’s – but that is an unsatisfactory suggestion. This construction must simply represent a portable frame for the altar in the courtyard, an improvement over the field altar. The purpose and function of the altar are not in question. Here worshipers would make their sacrifices to God in order to find forgiveness and atonement, and in order to celebrate in worship with him. No one could worship God apart from this; no one could approach God apart from this. So too the truths that this altar communicated form the basis and center of all Christian worship. One could word an applicable lesson this way: Believers must ensure that the foundation and center of their worship is the altar, i.e., the sacrificial atonement.


text: Or “enclosure” (TEV).


text: Heb “south side southward.”


text: Or “curtains.”


text: Heb “and.”


text: Heb “and thus.”


text: Here the phrase “there will be” has been supplied.


text: The word literally means “shoulder.” The next words, “of the gate,” have been supplied here and in v. 15 . The east end would contain the courtyard’s entry with a wall of curtains on each side of the entry (see v. 16 ).


text: Here “will be” has been supplied.


text: Heb “shoulder.”


text: The text uses the passive participle here: they are to “be filleted with silver” or “bound round” with silver.


text: Here the phrase “are to be” has been supplied.


text: Heb “a hundred cubits.”


text: Heb “fifty.” The text has “and the width fifty [cubits] with fifty.” This means that it is fifty cubits wide on the western end and fifty cubits wide on the eastern end.


text: Here “hangings” has been supplied.


text: Here the phrase “is to be” has been supplied.


text: Heb “to all”; for use of the preposition lamed ( ל ) to show inclusion (all belonging to) see GKC 458 §143. e .


text: Here “used” has been supplied.


text: The form is the imperfect tense with the vav showing a sequence with the first verb: “you will command…that they take.” The verb “take, receive” is used here as before for receiving an offering and bringing it to the sanctuary.


text: Heb “lamp,” which must be a collective singular here.


text: The verb is unusual; it is the Hiphil infinitive construct of עָלָה (’ alah ), with the sense here of “to set up” to burn, or “to fix on” as in Exod 25:37 , or “to kindle” (U. Cassuto, Exodus , 370).


text: The LXX has mistakenly rendered this name “the tent of the testimony.”