A base or socket is the supporting piece on which a frame or post stands. Exodus describes silver bases beneath the tabernacle frames, making an easily overlooked component part of the carefully assembled sanctuary.
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Reader summary
Full entry for אֶדֶן (H134) · Open the biblical lexicon
A base or socket is the supporting piece on which a frame or post stands. Exodus describes silver bases beneath the tabernacle frames, making an easily overlooked component part of the carefully assembled sanctuary.
The BSB source-word alignment has 57 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include bases (31), and bases (5), - (4), The bases (4), . . . (3).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Exodus 26:19. Its strongest book concentrations include Exodus (51), Numbers (4), Job (1), Song Of Solomon (1).
A base or socket is the supporting piece on which a frame or post stands. Exodus describes silver bases beneath the tabernacle frames, making an easily overlooked component part of the carefully assembled sanctuary. Numbers assigns such pieces to a particular group's carrying responsibilities, so support also belongs to the practical labor of moving the tent.
Job uses foundation language in God's questions about the earth, bringing the image into a poetic description of creation. The word does not turn those three settings into one coded doctrine of foundations. It helps readers see what holds a structure in place, who must care for its components, and how ordinary building language can serve a larger argument. Its theological force arises from the sanctuary instructions or divine speech in which the supporting object is named.
The tabernacle's supporting bases are specified, transported, and installed. Job's creation questions reuse the building image poetically, directing attention toward the Creator's wisdom rather than a literal construction diagram.
With forty silver bases under the twenty frames—two bases for each frame, one under each tenon.
Two silver bases receive the tenons beneath each frame; the stated arrangement concerns the sanctuary's physical support rather than an encoded list of virtues.
This is the duty for all their service at the Tent of Meeting: to carry the frames of the tabernacle with its crossbars, posts, and bases,
The Merarites' assigned load includes frames, crossbars, posts, and bases, making apparently minor support pieces part of named service responsibilities.
On what were its foundations set, or who laid its cornerstone,
God asks where the earth's foundations were set within a sequence of creation questions that challenges Job's understanding through construction imagery.
BSB source-word alignment connects this entry to exact verse rows, English rendering, source form, transliteration, and parsing.
How English Renders ItA compact distribution from source-word alignment before the full evidence tables.
Hebrew word. Structural foundation or socket that bears weight; metaphorically, basis or ground of stability
Structural foundation or socket that bears weight; metaphorically, basis or ground of stability
a basis (of a building, a column, etc.) BDB: base Usage: foundation, socket.
How this word appears across different grammatical cases and numbers.
אֶדֶן is built from this root:
Support matters in these passages because the text gives it a defined task. The silver bases in Exodus receive the tabernacle frames in a particular arrangement. Numbers does not leave their transport to an anonymous background; it specifies the load carried by the Merarites. This can help a congregation appreciate ordinary responsibilities without pretending that every support piece is a divinely assigned metaphor for a modern ministry position.
Job's foundations belong to a different kind of discourse. God's question unsettles the assumption that a human observer can master creation's deepest ordering. Both settings reward attention to the object and its role, but they teach through different literary movements. Faithful teaching allows detailed sanctuary work and humble wonder before the Creator to remain recognizably different.
Exod.26.19
The licensed Hebrew lexical witness supports base or supporting socket. A literal fitting beneath sanctuary frames and the poetic foundations of the earth share support imagery, but genre and referent determine the contribution in each verse.
Paul's foundation language in First Corinthians 3 belongs to his account of Christ and the building of the church. It offers a contextual comparison with support imagery, while the Exodus bases retain their place in the tabernacle instructions rather than becoming an independent Christian symbol.