וַיְחַבֵּ֛ר אֶת חֲמֵ֥שׁ הַיְרִיעֹ֖ת לְבָ֑ד וְאֶת שֵׁ֥שׁ הַיְרִיעֹ֖ת לְבָֽד
He coupled five curtains by themselves, and six curtains by themselves.
World English Bible · Public Domain
Exodus 36:16
Hebrew (Westminster Leningrad Codex) Exodus 36:16 appears in the Hebrew Old Testament. The text above is from the Westminster Leningrad Codex. Each word links to its Strong’s number, a concise gloss, and parsing drawn from the Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible morphology. Click any word for its full Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB) entry.
English Translation
He coupled five curtains by themselves, and six curtains by themselves.
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Compare translations 3
The same verse in 3 English versions, stacked beneath the original-language interlinear above. Click any original word for its lexicon entry.
Each is an independent rendering of the whole verse — the interlinear is not word-aligned to these translations.
Highlighted words mark where these versions differ — a whole-verse word diff, not a word-by-word alignment.
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World English Bible Public Domain
He coupled five curtains by themselves, and six curtains by themselves.
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King James Version Public Domain
And he coupled five curtains by themselves, and six curtains by themselves.
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unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
And he joined five curtains to each other and six curtains to each other.
unfoldingWord Literal Text — © unfoldingWord, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Word-aligned USFM3 via Door43 (git.door43.org/unfoldingWord/en_ult).
Show all 18 translations
Every available English version of this verse, each an independent rendering of the whole verse.
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World English Bible Public Domain
He coupled five curtains by themselves, and six curtains by themselves.
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Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
He joined five of the curtains into one set and the other six into another.
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Majority Standard Bible Public Domain
He joined five of the curtains into one set and the other six into another.
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King James Version Public Domain
And he coupled five curtains by themselves, and six curtains by themselves.
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American Standard Version (1901) Public Domain
And he coupled five curtains by themselves, and six curtains by themselves.
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Revised Version (1885) Public Domain
And he coupled five curtains by themselves, and six curtains by themselves.
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Geneva Bible (1599) Public Domain
And hee coupled fiue curtaines by themselues, and sixe curtaines by themselues:
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Douay-Rheims (1899) Public Domain
Five of which he joined apart, and the other six apart.
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Young's Literal Translation Public Domain
and he joineth the five curtains apart, and the six curtains apart.
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Literal Standard Version CC BY-SA 4.0
and he joins the five curtains apart, and the six curtains apart.
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Unlocked Literal Bible CC BY-SA 4.0
He joined five curtains to each other and the other six curtains to each other.
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unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
And he joined five curtains to each other and six curtains to each other.
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Darby Bible Public Domain
And he coupled five of the curtains by themselves, and six of the curtains by themselves.
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World Messianic Bible Public Domain
He coupled five curtains by themselves, and six curtains by themselves.
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Webster's Bible Public Domain
And he coupled five curtains by themselves, and six curtains by themselves.
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Free Bible Version CC BY-SA 4.0
They joined five of the curtains together as one set and the other six as another set.
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Bible in Basic English Public Domain
Five curtains were joined together to make one group, and six curtains were joined together to make the other group.
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JPS Tanakh (1917) Public Domain
And he coupled five curtains by themselves, and six curtains by themselves.
Literal Standard Version (2020), Covenant Press — licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API (eBible.org). Unlocked Literal Bible (unfoldingWord) — licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API (eBible.org). unfoldingWord Literal Text — © unfoldingWord, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Word-aligned USFM3 via Door43 (git.door43.org/unfoldingWord/en_ult). Free Bible Version, Dr. Jonathan Gallagher — licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API (eBible.org).
Word by word
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וַיְחַבֵּ֛ר
châbar
H2266
“and · to bind together”
Conjunction + Verb, Piel, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular
- Appears 29× in the Hebrew Bible
- First appears at Genesis 14:3
- Part of Speech
- Conjunction + Verb
- Stem
- Piel
- Form
- Sequential Imperfect
- Person
- 3rd Person
- Gender
- Masculine
- Number
- Singular
Full BDB Definition
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
- וַיְחַבֵּ֛ר châbar H2266 “and · to bind together” Conjunction + Verb, Piel, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular
- אֶת ʼêth H853 “-” Particle, Direct Object
- חֲמֵ֥שׁ châmêsh H2568 “five” Adjective, Cardinal number, Feminine, Singular, Absolute
- הַיְרִיעֹ֖ת yᵉrîyʻâh H3407 “the · curtains” Particle, Definite Article + Noun, Common, Feminine, Plural, Absolute
- לְבָ֑ד bad H905 “to/for · apart” Preposition + Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute
- וְאֶת ʼêth H853 “and · -” Conjunction + Particle, Direct Object
- שֵׁ֥שׁ shêsh H8337 “six” Adjective, Cardinal number, Feminine, Singular, Absolute
- הַיְרִיעֹ֖ת yᵉrîyʻâh H3407 “the · curtains” Particle, Definite Article + Noun, Common, Feminine, Plural, Absolute
- לְבָֽד bad H905 “to/for · apart” Preposition + Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute
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 →
- 9
- words
- 6
- distinct lemmas
- Pentateuch
- section
Shared distinctive vocabulary
וַיְחַבֵּ֛ר to bind together H2266 occurs in 25 verses of the Hebrew Bible. Also found in:
Grammatical profile
- 1 verb
- 4 nouns
- 2 adjectives
- 2 particles
Verb forms
- וַיְחַבֵּ֛ר Piel · Sequential Imperfect
Repetition
Words recur within this verse — often emphatic in Hebrew:
Hebrew & Septuagint length
In English translation the verse runs 11 words from the Hebrew and 19 from the Septuagint (LXX English) — the Septuagint runs noticeably longer here. See the side-by-side →
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 9 Hebrew tokens and 13 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.
Hebrew and Greek witnesses Masoretic Hebrew ↔ Greek Septuagint
The same verse in the two great witnesses to the Old Testament, shown verse-for-verse.
Here the Septuagint runs noticeably longer than the Hebrew — LXX2012 (modern English Septuagint) 19 words vs World English Bible 11. A rough length comparison of the two English translations, not a word-level alignment — read both below.
These are two independent witnesses, not word-aligned to each other, and the Septuagint is shown in lemma (dictionary) form.
τετράγωνος διπλοῦς ποιέω ὁ λογεῖον σπιθαμή ὁ μῆκος καί σπιθαμή ὁ εὖρος διπλοῦς
They made the oracle square and double, the length of a span, and the breadth of a span, —double.
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.
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Targum Onkelos Torah (Genesis–Deuteronomy)
וְלָפֵף יָת חָמֵשׁ יְרִיעָן לְחוֹד וְיָת שִׁית יְרִיעָן לְחוֹד:
(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.
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Targum Pseudo-Jonathan Torah (Genesis–Deuteronomy)
וְלָפֵיף יַת חֲמֵשׁ יְרִיעַן לְחוֹד כָּל קְבֵיל חַמְשָׁא סִפְרֵי אוֹרַיְיתָא וְיַת שִׁית יְרִיעַן לְחוֹד כָּל קְבֵיל שִׁתָּא סִדְרֵי מַתְנְיָיתָא
And he joined five curtains together, corresponding with the five books of the law; and six curtains together, corresponding with the six orders of the Mishna.
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.
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 9 words (6 distinct Hebrew lemmas). Its most distinctive word is châbar (“to bind together”). The Greek Septuagint runs longer here. Read the whole chapter for the surrounding context.
Discussion questions
- The word châbar carries the sense “to bind together.” How does it shape the verse?
- Genesis 14:3 shares the word «to bind together» with this verse. How do the two illuminate each other?
- “curtain” occurs 2× in this one verse. What is the effect of the repetition?
- Compared with the Hebrew, the Septuagint runs longer here. What questions does that raise?
- These translations render this verse differently. What is at stake in choosing one wording over another?
- The verb «וַיְחַבֵּ֛ר» is Piel Sequential Imperfect. How does its form color the action?
Things to notice
- This verse counts 9 Hebrew ↔ 13 Greek words.
- These translations choose different wording for 5 words in this verse.
- “curtain” occurs 2× in this single verse.
- 6 distinct Hebrew lemmas span 9 words in this verse.