A covering or curtain screens an opening, separates a space or conceals what lies beneath it. Exodus 26:36 prescribes an embroidered curtain for the entrance to the tent, with its material and supporting posts specified.
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Full entry for מָסָךְ (H4539) · Open the biblical lexicon
A covering or curtain screens an opening, separates a space or conceals what lies beneath it. Exodus 26:36 prescribes an embroidered curtain for the entrance to the tent, with its material and supporting posts specified.
The BSB source-word alignment has 25 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include the curtain (9), and the curtain (3), a curtain (2), the curtains (2), a covering (1).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Exodus 26:36. Its strongest book concentrations include Exodus (16), Numbers (6), 2 Samuel (1), Isaiah (1).
A covering or curtain screens an opening, separates a space or conceals what lies beneath it. Exodus 26:36 prescribes an embroidered curtain for the entrance to the tent, with its material and supporting posts specified. Second Samuel 17:19 describes a covering spread over a well to hide the two messengers during Absalom's pursuit. Psalm 105:39 pictures the cloud spread as a covering over Israel during the wilderness journey.
These uses concern sanctuary arrangement, a particular act of concealment and remembered divine care. A reader should identify the opening or people being covered rather than assume that every curtain is the sanctuary's innermost veil. Nor does a covering object establish a universal ethical rule about hiding information. The passage gives its location and purpose, while the broader narrative supplies the responsibilities surrounding its use.
An entrance curtain, a well covering and the cloud over Israel have different locations and functions. The noun's material image needs those details before it can support a sanctuary comparison or application about protection.
For the entrance to the tent, you are to make a curtain embroidered with blue, purple, and scarlet yarn, and finely spun linen.
The prescribed curtain belongs at the tent's entrance and receives five supporting posts in the next verse; it must not automatically be identified with every other sanctuary veil.
Then the man’s wife took a covering, spread it over the mouth of the well, and scattered grain over it so nobody would know a thing.
A covering and scattered grain conceal the well containing the messengers; the narrated action has a specific pursuit setting rather than a universal rule about deception.
He spread a cloud as a covering and a fire to light up the night.
The cloud's covering is remembered beside the fire's nighttime light, within praise of God's provision for Israel in the wilderness.
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. Textile barrier that conceals and separates sacred from profane space in tabernacle worship
Textile barrier that conceals and separates sacred from profane space in tabernacle worship
a cover, i.e. veil BDB: covering Usage: covering, curtain, hanging.
How this word appears across different grammatical cases and numbers.
Selected passage-level study witnesses for this word. This section is not the full occurrence list.
Showing 1 selected witness from 25 lexical occurrence verses.
מָסָךְ is built from this root:
Removal of covering signifies exposed vulnerability under God’s hand.Isaiah 22:1-8
Exodus is careful about where its curtain belongs. The entrance screen serves an ordered space with specified supports, while other sanctuary descriptions refer to another boundary and different responsibilities. Treating all curtains as interchangeable would lose that arrangement before a teacher reached any theological application. Second Samuel places a covering over a well for a different purpose, and Psalm 105 uses the cloud as a covering in remembered wilderness care.
Hebrews likewise distinguishes the sanctuary's rooms and speaks of access through Jesus within its own argument. The Christian connection should follow that argument, not assert that every occurrence of a screen encodes the same promise. Teachers can make the material image understandable while asking what is being covered, why and under whose responsibility, without using protective language to excuse the concealment of harm.
Exod.26.36
The noun names a covering or screen, with location and material varying by passage. Sanctuary descriptions contain separately tagged curtain and veil vocabulary; matching English labels must not merge distinct identifiers or erase the specified entrance and inner-room arrangement.
Hebrews 9:1-5 describes the sanctuary's distinct rooms and second curtain. Hebrews 10:19-21 then grounds confidence to enter in Jesus' blood and the new way it describes through His body. That connection rests on Hebrews' stated argument; it does not make every covering, concealed well or wilderness cloud a lexical prediction of that same access.