Exodus 25:5

And rams' skins died red,.... Of these were made a covering for the tent or tabernacle: and badgers' skins, which were for the same use: the Septuagint version calls them hyacinth or blue skins;

And rams' skins dyed red, and badgers' skins, and shittim wood, Rams' skins dyed red - red morocco leather (see the processes of tanning and dyeing leather among the ancient Egyptians described,

A kind of wood growing in Egypt and the deserts of Arabia, very durable and precious. See .

Exodus 25:5 And rams’ skins dyed red, and badgers’ skins, and shittim wood,Ver. 5. Shittim wood.] A kind of cedar that rotteth not.

(5) Rams’ skins dyed red.—North Africa has always been celebrated for the production of the best possible leather. Herodotus describes the manufacture of his own times (Hist. iv. 189). Even at the present day, we bind our best books in morocco. Brilliant colours always were, and still are, affected by the North African races, and their “red skins” have been famous in all ages. It is probable that the Israelites had brought with them many skins of this kind out of Egypt. Badgers’ skins.—The badger is not a native of North Africa, nor of the Arabian desert; and the translation of the Hebrew takhash by “badger” is a very improbable conjecture. In Arabic, tukhash or dukhash is the name of a marine animal resembling the seal; or, perhaps it should rather be said, is applied with some vagueness to a number of sea-animals, as seals, dugongs, dolphins, sharks, and dog-fish. The skins here spoken of are probably those of some one or more of these animals. They formed the outer covering of the Tabernacle (Exodus 26:14). Shittim wood.—That the shittah (plural, shittim) was a species of Acacia is now generally admitted. It was certainly not the palm; and there are no trees in the Sinaitic region from which boards could be cut (see Exodus 26:15) except the palm and the acacia. The Sinaitic acacia (A. Seyal) is a “gnarled and thorny tree, somewhat like a solitary hawthorn in its habit and manner of growth, but much larger” (Tristram). At present it does not, in the Sinaitic region, grow to such a size as would admit of planks, ten cubits long by one and a half wide, being cut from it; but, according to Canon Tristram (Nat. Hist. Of the Bible, p. 392), it attains such a size in Palestine, and therefore may formerly have done so in Arabia. The wood is “hard and close-grained, of an orange colour with a darker heart, well adapted for cabinetwork.”

Verse 5. Rams' skins dyed red] ערת אילם מאדמים oroth eylim meoddamim, literally, the skins of red rams. It is a fact attested by many respectable travellers, that in the Levant sheep are often to be met with that have red or violet-coloured fleeces. And almost all ancient writers speak of the same thing. Homer describes the rams of Polyphemus as having a violet-coloured fleece. Αρσενεςοΐεςησανεΰτρεφεες, δασυμαλλοι, Καλοιτε, μεγαλοιτε, ιοδνεφεςειροςεχοντες. Odyss., lib. ix., ver. 425. "Strong were the rams, with native purple fair, Well fed, and largest of the fleecy care." POPE. Pliny, Aristotle, and others mention the same. And from facts of this kind it is very probable that the fable of the golden fleece had its origin. In the Zetland Isles I have seen sheep with variously coloured fleeces, some white, some black, some black and white, some of a very fine chocolate colour. Beholding those animals brought to my recollection those words of Virgil: - Ipse sed in pratis Aries jam suave rubenti Murice, jam croceo mutabit vellera luto. Eclog. iv., ver. 43. "No wool shall in dissembled colours shine; But the luxurious father of the fold, With native purple or unborrow'd gold, Beneath his pompous fleece shall proudly sweat, And under Tyrian robes the lamb shall bleat." DRYDEN. Badgers' skins] ערת תחשים oroth techashim. Few terms have afforded greater perplexity to critics and commentators than this. Bochart has exhausted the subject, and seems to have proved that no kind of animal is here intended, but a colour. None of the ancient versions acknowledge an animal of any kind except the Chaldee, which seems to think the badger is intended, and from it we have borrowed our translation of the word. The Septuagint and Vulgate have skins dyed a violet colour; the Syriac, azure; the Arabic, black; the Coptic, violet; the modern Persic, ram-skins, c. The colour contended for by Bochart is the hysginus, which is a very deep blue. So Pliny, Coccoque tinctum Tyrio tingere, ut fieret hysginum. "They dip crimson in purple to make the colour called hysginus." - Hist. Nat., lib. ix., c. 65, edit. Bipont. Shittim wood] By some supposed to be the finest species of the cedar by others, the acacia Nilotica, a species of thorn, solid, light, and very beautiful. This acacia is known to have been plentiful in Egypt, and it abounds in Arabia Deserta, the very place in which Moses was when he built the tabernacle; and hence it is reasonable to suppose that he built it of that wood, which was every way proper for his purpose.

5. Skins and wood. rams’ skins dyed red] These formed the second covering over the certains (Exodus 26:14). sealskins] Heb. ‘skins of tĕ ?ḥ ?βshim,’ a word of uncertain meaning. In Arab. tuḥ ?as or duḥ ?as means a dolphin, which makes it probable that the dugong (Malay duyong, a sea-cow) is meant, an animal in general appearance not unlike a dolphin, though with a larger and blunter nose (see ill. in Toy’s Ezekiel, in SBOT., p. 124), species of which are common in the Red Sea; their thick and hard skins supply the Bedawin of the Sin. Peninsula with material for sandals (NHB. 44 f.; EB. i. 450 f.). An alternative view has been propounded lately, which may also be right, that taḥ ?ash is a loan-word from the Egypt. tḥ ?s, ‘leather’ (Bondi, Aegyptiaca, 1 ff., with a full discussion of different views). The third or outermost covering over the curtains forming the ‘Dwelling’ (Exodus 26:14, &c.), wrappings for the sacred vessels on transport (Numbers 4:6 ff.), and women’s sandals (Ezekiel 16:10), are mentioned as made of taḥ ?ash skins. AV. badgers, though some such animal is advocated in the Talm., lacks philological foundation, and has no probability. It is doubtful also whether either seals or porpoises (RV. and RVm.) are sufficiently common in either the Red Sea or the Medit. to be the animals intended. acacia] Heb. shiṭ ?ṭ ?im [for shinṭ ?im], shewn to be acacia, from sanṭ ?, the Arab. name of that tree. Several species of acacia are found in Palestine, the Sin. Peninsula, and the Arabian desert (EB. s.v. Shittah tree): the Acacia seyβl flourishes in dry wβdys, and grows freely in the Peninsula, and along the W. shore of the Dead Sea: it is a gnarled and thorny tree, some 15–25 feet in height: and its wood is hard, close-grained, and durable (cf. the rend. of LXX. ξύλαἄσεπτα). According to Doughty (Arab. Des. ii. 678, cited in EB. l.c.), another species is used for shipbuilding on the Arabian coast of the Red Sea. The wood of the tree is mentioned only in the Pent., in connexion with the Tent of Meeting: the tree itself is mentioned also in Isaiah 41:19. See further NHB. 390 ff., DB. Shiṭ ?ṭ ?ah tree, the illustration above, p. 181; and the note on Joe 3:18 in the Camb. Bible.

5. Rams’ skins dyed red — “These skins may have been tanned and coloured like the leather now known as red morocco, which is said to have been manufactured in Libya from the remotest antiquity.” — Speaker’s Commentary.