Exodus 36:38

Summary

This verse completes the description of the five pillars supporting the screen at the entrance of the tabernacle court, listing their hooks, gold-plated capitals and bands, and their bronze bases. The syntax moves from a list of parts (introduced by object markers) to a single finite verb describing the overlay action, then closes with another list naming the material of the bases.

Key words

• 'ammudav ("its pillars", H5982G) — masculine plural noun in construct form with a pronominal suffix, meaning "its pillars" (referring back to the screen described in prior verses).
• tzippah ("he overlaid", H6823) — piel stem, sequential perfect; the piel here conveys a thorough, applied covering action (plating), and the sequential perfect continues the narrative chain from the previous verses.
• rashim ("tops", H7218I) — construct plural noun, "tops of them," referring to the capitals of the pillars that receive the gold overlay.
• chamishah ("five", H2568) — cardinal number appearing twice, once for the pillars and once for the bases, structurally framing the whole verse.
• nechoshet ("bronze", H5178A) — feminine singular noun stating the material of the bases, placed at the very end of the verse without a copula.

What the text says

The verse has no verb until tzippah appears in the middle. Before that, two items — the pillars ('ammudav) and their hooks (vavei-hem) — are introduced only by the object marker 'et (H0853), meaning they are grammatically dependent on a verb from the preceding verse (the making of the screen), not on any verb within verse 38 itself. Once tzippah appears, it governs two objects in construct chains: rashei-hem ("their tops") and chashuqei-hem ("their bands"), both overlaid with zahav ("gold", H2091). The final clause, "ve'adnei-hem chamishah nechoshet" ("and their bases, five, bronze"), is a verbless nominal clause: the noun nechoshet stands as a predicate without any stated verb "to be," a common construction in Biblical Hebrew for identifying material or attribute.

The repetition of chamishah ("five") for both pillars and bases frames the verse symmetrically, tying the count of structural supports to the count of their foundations, while the single verb tzippah handles the gold-plating of both the capitals and the bands in one grammatical stroke.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew text (TAHOT) and the Vulgate (Clementine) closely align in content, though the Vulgate adds the verb fudit ("he cast") for the bronze bases, an action not explicitly stated in the Hebrew, which simply names the material nechoshet ("bronze") without a verb. The Greek text supplied here (LXXSWETE) does not correspond to this verse's content at all — it describes a golden plate (πέταλον) associated with the sanctuary, reflecting the well-documented divergence in chapter and verse arrangement between the Septuagint and the Masoretic Text in the latter chapters of Exodus dealing with the tabernacle's construction.