Exodus 36:22

Summary

Exodus 36:22 describes the physical joinery of the tabernacle's wooden frames: each frame had two projecting "hands" (tenons) that fit into corresponding sockets, joining one frame to the next. The verse closes by stating that this same method was applied uniformly to all the frames of the tabernacle.

Key words

• yaDot ("hands", H3027G) — plural common noun, used here not for body parts but for the projecting tenons or pegs on each frame that interlock with the next.
• meshulaVot ("joined", H7947) — pual (intensive passive) participle, feminine plural, indicating the frames are being made to join to one another, emphasizing the structural fitting rather than a simple state.
• 'eChad ("one", H0259) — appears twice (as 'aChat... 'el 'aChat, "one to one"), a Hebrew idiom expressing reciprocal correspondence, "each to the other."
• ken ("thus", H3651C) — adverb marking a summary transition, signaling that the specific description just given is now generalized.
• 'aSah ("he did/made", H6213A) — qal perfect, third person, showing a completed, single act of construction applied as a rule to the entire set of frames.

What the text says

The verse opens with a construct phrase, shetei yaDot ("two of hands"), followed by la-Keresh ha-'eChad ("to the frame, the one"), establishing that each individual frame possessed a pair of tenons. The pual participle meshulaVot describes these tenons as mutually fitted or interlocked — the passive-intensive form conveys that the joining is a deliberate, structural fit built into the design, not an incidental attachment. The repetition 'aChat 'el 'eChat ("one to one") is a distributive idiom common in the tabernacle-construction texts, expressing correspondence between paired elements without needing a plural noun for "pairs."

The second half of the verse shifts from describing a single frame to a general statement using ken 'aSah ("thus he did"), a qal perfect verb indicating a completed act extended to every frame. The final clause, le-Khol qarshei ha-mishKan ("for all the frames of the tabernacle"), uses a construct chain to specify that this joinery method was the standard applied throughout the entire structure, not just to the one frame just described.

Differences between versions

The Vulgate (binæ incastraturæ... ut altera alteri jungeretur) and the Spanish versions closely follow the Hebrew structure, describing paired tenons/sockets joining each board to the next. The LXX text provided (Swete) speaks instead of golden fringes or plaited work (κροσσούς, "tassels," ἔργον ἐμπλοκίου, "work of plaiting," χρυσίου καθαροῦ, "pure gold"), content that does not correspond to the Hebrew's description of frame-joinery at all, indicating the LXX passage cited here reflects a different section of the tabernacle text than the Hebrew verse under analysis.