Exodus 26:3

Hebrew (Westminster Leningrad Codex)

English Translation

Five curtains shall be coupled together one to another; and the other five curtains shall be coupled one to another.

World English Bible · Public Domain

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חֹֽבְרֹ֔ת

châbar

H2266

“binding together”

Verb, Qal, Participle Active, Feminine, Plural, Absolute

Appears 29× in the Hebrew Bible
First appears at Genesis 14:3

Full BDB Definition

Origin: a primitive root

TWOT: 598

to unite, join, bind together, be joined, be coupled, be in league, heap up, have fellowship with, be compact, be a charmer - (Qal) - to unite, be joined - to tie magic charms, charm - (Piel) - to unite with, make an ally of - to unite, join, ally - (Pual) - to be allied with, be united - to be joined together - (Hiphil) to join together, pile up (words) - (Hithpael) to join oneself to, make an alliance, league together

About this verse

These counts appear in no published source. They are computed here, from the morphology-tagged text and Lemma’s own curated glosses. What Lemma adds →

13: words
7: distinct lemmas
Pentateuch: section

Shared distinctive vocabulary

חֹֽבְרֹ֔ת to bind together H2266 occurs in 25 verses of the Hebrew Bible. Also found in:

Grammatical profile

3 verbs
6 nouns
2 adjectives
2 prepositions

Verb forms

תִּֽהְיֶ֨יןָ֙ Qal · Imperfect
חֹֽבְרֹ֔ת Qal · Participle Active
חֹֽבְרֹ֔ת Qal · Participle Active

Repetition

Words recur within this verse — often emphatic in Hebrew:

חֲמֵ֣שׁ five H2568 ×2
הַיְרִיעֹ֗ת curtain H3407 ×2
חֹֽבְרֹ֔ת to bind together H2266 ×2
אִשָּׁ֖ה woman H802 ×2
אֲחֹתָ֑הּ sister H269 ×2
אֶל to H413 ×2

Hebrew & Septuagint length

In English translation the verse runs 20 words from the Hebrew and 24 from the Septuagint (LXX English) — closely comparable.

A rough comparison of the two English renderings, which tokenize alike — not a word-level alignment.

Word counts can differ between the Hebrew and the Greek without any difference in meaning — e.g. the Hebrew direct-object marker אֵת has no separate Greek word, and Greek often adds the article ὁ.

In the original languages it is 13 Hebrew tokens and 20 Greek tokens — but the two are counted differently (Hebrew bundles its prefixes and suffixes into one token; the Greek is in lemma form), so that isn’t a like-for-like length.

Cross-references

Topical passages linked to Exodus 26:3 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge — connected by theme and wording, ordered by reader-vote popularity; previews shown in the World English Bible.

Exodus 26:9 You shall couple five curtains by themselves, and six curtains by themselves, and shall double over the sixth curtain in the forefront of the tent.
Exodus 36:10 He coupled five curtains to one another, and the other five curtains he coupled one to another.
John 17:21 that they may all be one; even as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be one in us; that the world may believe that you sent me.
1 Corinthians 12:4 Now there are various kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit.
1 Corinthians 12:12–27 For as the body is one, and has many members, and all the members of the body, being many, are one body; so also is Christ.
Ephesians 2:21–22 in whom the whole building, fitted together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord;
Ephesians 4:3–6 being eager to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
Ephesians 4:16 from whom all the body, being fitted and knit together through that which every joint supplies, according to the working in measure of each individual part, makes the body increase to the building up of itself in love.

Colossians 2:2 that their hearts may be comforted, they being knit together in love, and gaining all riches of the full assurance of understanding, that they may know the mystery of God, both of the Father and of Christ,
Colossians 2:19 and not holding firmly to the Head, from whom all the body, being supplied and knit together through the joints and ligaments, grows with God's growth.

Cross-references courtesy of OpenBible.info (CC BY 4.0).

Hebrew and Greek witnesses Masoretic Hebrew ↔ Greek Septuagint

The same verse in the two great witnesses to the Old Testament, shown verse-for-verse.

These are two independent witnesses, not word-aligned to each other, and the Septuagint is shown in lemma (dictionary) form.

Hebrew Exodus 26:3 Masoretic · Westminster Leningrad Codex

חֲמֵ֣שׁ הַיְרִיעֹ֗ת תִּֽהְיֶ֨יןָ֙ חֹֽבְרֹ֔ת אִשָּׁ֖ה אֶל אֲחֹתָ֑הּ וְחָמֵ֤שׁ יְרִיעֹת֙ חֹֽבְרֹ֔ת אִשָּׁ֖ה אֶל אֲחֹתָֽהּ

Five curtains shall be coupled together one to another; and the other five curtains shall be coupled one to another.

World English Bible · Public Domain

Greek LXX Exodus 26:3 Septuagint · lemma form

πέντε δέ αὐλαία εἰμί ἐκ ἀλλήλω ἔχω ὁ ἕτερος ἐκ ὁ ἕτερος καί πέντε αὐλαία εἰμί συνἔχω ἕτερος ὁ ἕτερος

And the five curtains shall be joined one to another, and the other five curtains shall be closely connected the one with the other.

LXX2012 (modern English Septuagint) · Public Domain

Hebrew: Westminster Leningrad Codex (CC BY 4.0). Greek: Septuagint (public domain); English from LXX2012 (modern English Septuagint) (Public Domain). How the Septuagint differs from the Hebrew →

Targum (Aramaic paraphrase)

The Targum is the ancient Jewish Aramaic paraphrase of the Hebrew Scriptures — an interpretive translation, not the Hebrew text itself. Onkelos (literal) and Pseudo-Jonathan (expansive) render the Torah, and Jonathan the Prophets. Coverage is partial: where no permissively-licensed English translation exists for a verse, only the Aramaic is shown. This is verse-level text, not a word-by-word alignment to the Hebrew.

Targum Onkelos Torah (Genesis–Deuteronomy)

חֲמֵשׁ יְרִיעָן יְהֶוְיָן מְלַפְּפָן חֲדָא עִם חֲדָא וַחֲמֵשׁ יְרִיעָן מְלַפְּפָן חֲדָא עִם חֲדָא:

(no public-domain English translation for this verse)

Targum Onkelos — Aramaic: “Onkelos Genesis” (public domain); “Onkelos Exodus” (public domain); “Onkelos Leviticus” (public domain); “Onkelos Numbers” (public domain); “Onkelos Deuteronomy” (public domain). English: “Sefaria Community Translation” (CC0 1.0 (public-domain dedication)); “J.W. Etheridge. The Targums of Onkelos and Jonathan Ben Uzziel on the Pentateuch. London: Longmans, Green, 1862” (public domain). Text via Sefaria.
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan Torah (Genesis–Deuteronomy)

חֲמֵשׁ יְרִיעַן תֶּהֶוְיַן מְלַפְּפָן חֲדָא עִם חֲדָא וַחֲמֵשׁ יְרִיעַן חוֹרַנְיָין מְלַפְּפָן חֲדָא עִם חֲדָא

Five curtains shall be coupled one with another, and five other curtains coupled one with another.

Targum Pseudo-Jonathan — Aramaic: “Targum Jonathan on Genesis” (public domain); “Targum Jonathan on Exodus” (public domain); “Targum Jonathan on Leviticus” (public domain); “Targum Jonathan on Numbers” (public domain); “Targum Jonathan on Deuteronomy” (public domain). English: “The Targum of Jonathan ben Uzziel, trans. J. W. Etheridge, London, 1862” (public domain). Text via Sefaria.

Commentary

Notes on Exodus 26:3 from classic Christian and Jewish commentators (each source and its license shown beneath its notes). The classic Christian expositions comment on the surrounding passage and are grouped to its opening verse, so a note may address several verses; the Jewish commentaries on the Tanakh (Rashi and others) are per-verse, so they appear only where the commentator wrote on this verse.

Lemma curates 59 commentaries, every one of them public domain or Creative Commons licensed, each selected and text-cleaned for this edition rather than reprinted as found. About our sources →

Trapp's Complete Commentary

John Trapp

Exo 26:3 The five curtains shall be coupled together one to another; and [other] five curtains [shall be] coupled one to another.

Ver. 3. Shall be coupled together.] These curtains were coupled with loops; so should Christians by love. "My dove is but one: the daughters saw her and blessed her." {Son 6:9} See Eph 2:21-22; Eph 4:16.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown

Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown

The five curtains shall be coupled together one to another, &c.--so as to form two grand divisions, each eleven yards wide.

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(3) The five curtains.—It is anomalous that the article should be used here. Probably it has crept in from “the curtains” of the preceding verse. The meaning is that five “breadths” should be sewn together to form one curtain, and five other “breadths” to form another, and then that the two curtains so formed should be joined into one by means of “loops” and “taches.” The object of making two curtains instead of one was clearly portability. The entire covering would have been too heavy and too bulky to be conveniently carried in one piece.

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne

3. The curtains were to be joined together, so as to form two sets of five, each 28 cubits (42 ft.) long, and 20 cubits (30 ft.) broad. The Dwelling was 30 cubits long, and 10 cubits high and broad: and the curtain was spread over it in such a way that it hung down for the entire height of 10 cubits behind (the front, having a ‘screen’ of its own (v. 36), not needing any curtain), and for 9 cubits on each of the two sides.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

John Gill's Exposition

The five curtains shall be coupled together one to another,.... Five of the ten curtains were to be sewed together, and make as it were one curtain:

and other five curtains shall be coupled one to another: the other five were to be joined together in like manner, and so made two large pieces of tapestry of fourteen yards long and ten broad, according to the common account of a cubit, but were much longer and broader.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary

Five curtains, which would cover half the tabernacle, or 20 cubits. (Calmet) --- Being joined together, they remind us of fraternal charity and union; which ought to adorn the members of the church. (Worthington)

George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).

The Pulpit Commentary

When the ten "breadths" had been woven, five were to be sewn together to form one portion of the awning, and the other five to form another portion, the reason for this being, probably, that if all the ten breadths had been sewn together, the awning would have been too cumbrous to have been readily folded together, or easily conveyed when the people journeyed.

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Rashi

Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki (Rashi)

תהיין חברת SHALL JOIN TOGETHER — They sewed them together with a needle, each five separately.

אשה אל אחתה ONE TO ANOTHER (lit., a woman to her sister) — This is the idiom of Biblical Hebrew — to speak thus about a thing that is of the feminine gender when it correlates it with a thing of the same kind. In the case of a thing that is masculine it uses the expression איש אל אחיו, lit., a man to his brother, as it is said, e. g. of the cherubim (Exodus 25:20) “and their faces were turned איש אל אחיו‎”.

Rashi on the Tanakh — English translations: “The Judaica Press complete Tanach with Rashi, translated by A. J. Rosenberg” (CC BY 4.0); “Pentateuch with Rashi's commentary by M. Rosenbaum and A.M. Silbermann, 1929-1934” (public domain); “The Metsudah Tanach series, Lakewood, N.J” (CC BY 4.0); and “The Book of Joshua, Metsudah Publications, 1997” (CC BY 4.0). Text via Sefaria.

Lesson kit

Teaching starters — assembled from the data on this page, not authored interpretation. Every prompt links to the verse data it draws on. Edit before teaching.

Exodus, in the Pentateuch, opens this verse with 13 words (7 distinct Hebrew lemmas). Its most distinctive word is châbar (“to bind together”). A historical commentator’s framing appears above. Read the whole chapter for the surrounding context.

Discussion questions

How does “to bind together” (châbar) shape what this verse is saying?
How does Genesis 14:3, which shares the word «to bind together», read alongside this verse?
What does the repetition of “five” (2× in this one verse) do in this verse?
The translations on this page render this verse differently — a whole-verse word diff, not a word-by-word alignment. What might account for the different wordings?
«תִּֽהְיֶ֨יןָ֙» is a Qal Imperfect verb. How does that grammatical form shape the action described?
Compare how Trapp's Complete Commentary and Jamieson, Fausset & Brown read this verse. Where do they agree or differ?

Things to notice

This verse counts 13 Hebrew ↔ 20 Greek words.
These translations choose different wording for 6 words in this verse.
“five” occurs 2× in this single verse.
7 distinct Hebrew lemmas span 13 words in this verse.