Exodus 36:12

Summary

This verse describes the construction detail of the tabernacle's curtains: fifty lulaot ("loops", H3924) were made on the edge of one curtain, and fifty more on the edge of the second curtain, positioned so the loops on both curtains would align with each other.

Key words

• lulaot ("loops", H3924) — feminine plural noun, appearing twice, each time as the object of "he made"; these are the paired fastening loops used to join curtain panels.
• 'asah ("he made", H6213H) — qal perfect, third person masculine singular, repeated twice; the perfect aspect marks each action as completed, describing a finished construction step.
• machberet ("joined set", H4225) — feminine singular noun with definite article and preceding preposition ba, indicating the specific assembled unit ("the joined set") where the second curtain's edge is located.
• maqbilot ("opposite", H6901) — hiphil participle, feminine plural, describing the loops as actively "causing to correspond" or standing in correspondence to one another; the participle form conveys an ongoing state of alignment rather than a single completed act.
• 'achat 'el-'achat ("one to one", H0259 + H0413 + H0259) — a doubled cardinal number joined by the preposition 'el ("to"), forming an idiomatic construction meaning "each one opposite the other," used to express reciprocal correspondence between the loops.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built as two parallel clauses, each with the pattern [number] + lulaot + 'asah + [locative phrase]: "fifty loops he made on the curtain, the one" and "fifty loops he made on the edge of the curtain, the one that was in the joined set, the second." The repetition of 'asah ("he made", H6213H) in the qal perfect underscores two discrete, completed manufacturing acts rather than a single combined one. The second clause is expanded by a relative clause introduced by 'asher ("which", H0834A), which specifies that this curtain's edge belongs to ha-machberet ha-shenit ("the second joined set", H4225 + H8145) — indicating the curtains were already grouped into two assembled sets before this loop-making step.

The final clause, maqbilot ha-lulaot 'achat 'el-'achat, functions as a summarizing statement using a hiphil participle (maqbilot, H6901) that describes the corresponding position of the loops, followed by the idiom 'achat 'el-'achat ("one to one", H0259+H0413+H0259) — a repeated numeral construction that in Biblical Hebrew conveys mutual correspondence, here rendered as the loops being aligned each to its counterpart.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew text of this verse concerns the fifty loops made on the edges of two curtains and their alignment. The Vulgate (VULCLEM) condenses this into a shorter clause, "ut contra se invicem venirent ansae, et mutuo jungerentur" ("so that the loops would come opposite each other and be mutually joined"), matching the sense of maqbilot... 'achat 'el-'achat but omitting the specific counts of fifty loops given in the Hebrew. The LXX text supplied (Swete) does not correspond to this verse's content at all; it instead describes materials (gold, blue, purple, twined linen) "as the Lord commanded Moses," reflecting a different portion of the Exodus tabernacle account rather than a rendering of the Hebrew verse given here.