Exodus 38:20

Summary

The verse states that all the tent pegs used for the tabernacle structure and for the surrounding courtyard were made of bronze. It closes a section of Exodus 38 listing the metals used in the construction of the sanctuary.

Key words

• khol ("all", H3605) — construct noun heading the clause, governing "the tent pegs" as its construct partner, meaning "all of the tent pegs."
• y'tedot ("tent pegs", H3489) — feminine plural noun, the subject of the sentence; the plural marks that multiple physical pegs are meant, not a collective abstraction.
• mishkan ("tabernacle", H4908) — singular noun preceded by the preposition-plus-article la ("for the"), indicating the pegs' function/destination rather than possession.
• chatzer ("courtyard", H2691A) — paired with mishkan via a second "for the" phrase, showing the pegs served two distinct spatial areas.
• nechoshet ("bronze", H5178A) — feminine singular noun functioning as a predicate of material, placed at the very end of the clause without a copula, stating what the pegs were made of.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence has a simple structure: subject — "all the tent pegs" (khol ha-y'tedot) — followed by two prepositional phrases specifying purpose ("for the tabernacle... and for the courtyard"), then the adverb saviv ("all around", H5439G) modifying "courtyard," and finally the predicate noun nechoshet ("bronze") stating the material. Hebrew here uses no verb "to be"; the noun nechoshet simply stands at the end of the clause as a nominal predicate, a common construction in Biblical Hebrew for stating composition or material.

The double use of the preposition la ("for the") before both mishkan and chatzer creates a balanced pairing, showing that the same class of object (tent pegs) served both the tabernacle building and its surrounding courtyard, with saviv clarifying that the courtyard pegs ran around its entire perimeter.

Differences between versions

The Vulgate ("Paxillos quoque tabernaculi et atrii per gyrum fecit æneos") and the Spanish translations closely follow the Hebrew, rendering y'tedot as "estacas"/"paxillos" ("pegs") and nechoshet as "bronze/æneos." The LXX text supplied here does not correspond to this content; it describes the casting of silver and bronze capitals (kephalides) for pillars and the gate of the courtyard, rather than tent pegs, reflecting a broader divergence in verse content and ordering between the Hebrew and Greek textual traditions of Exodus 35–40 in this section.