lines in thickness and very tough, so that the skin would be well adapted either for the thick covering of tents or for the finer kinds of ornamental sandals (Eze 16:10). שׁטּים עצי acacia-wood. שׁטּה for שׁנטה, the true acacia (acacia vera), which grows in Egypt and on the Arabian peninsula into a tree of the size of a nut-tree, or even larger;[1] the only tree in Arabia deserta from which planks could be cut, and the wood of which is very light and yet very durable.
Verse 6
Exo 25:6Oil for the candlestick (see at Exo 27:20). בּשׂמים perfumes, spices for the anointing oil (see at Exo 30:22.), and for the incense (הסּמּים, lit., the scents, because the materials of which it was composed were not all of them fragrant; see at Exo 30:34.).
Verse 7
Lastly, precious stones, שׁהם אבני probably beryls (see at Gen 2:12), for the ephod (Exo 28:9), and מלּאים אבני, lit., stones of filling, i.e., jewels that are set (see Exo 28:16.). On ephod (אפד), see at Exo 28:6; and on חשׁן, at Exo 28:15. The precious stones were presented by the princes of the congregation (Exo 35:27).
- ↑ See Abdallatif's Merkwürdigkeiten Aegyptens, and Rosenmüller, Althk. iv. i. pp. 278-9. This genuine acacia, Sont, must not be confounded, according to Robinson (Pal. 2, 350), with the Acacia gumnifera (Talh). Seetzen also makes a distinction between the Thollhh, the Szont of the Egyptians, and the Szeiâl, and between an acacia which produces gum and one which does not; but he also observes that the same tree is called both Thollhh and Szeiâl in different places. He then goes on to say that he did not find a single tree large enough to furnish planks of ten cubits in length and one and a half in breadth for the construction of the ark (he means, of the tabernacle), and he therefore conjectures that the Israelites may have gone to Egypt for the materials with which to build the tabernacle. But he has overlooked the fact, that it is not stated in the text of the Bible that the boards of the tabernacle, which were a cubit and a half in breadth, were cut from one plank of the breadth named; and also that the trees in the valleys of the peninsula of Sinai are being more and more sacrificed to the charcoal trade of the Bedouin Arabs (see p. 366), and therefore that no conclusion can be drawn from the present condition of the trees as to what they were in the far distant antiquity.
