Tuesday, August 25, 2020

Exodus 36:35-38 comments on the veil of the tabernacle




Exodus 36:35 ¶  And he made a vail of blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine twined linen: with cherubims made he it of cunning work. 36  And he made thereunto four pillars of shittim wood, and overlaid them with gold: their hooks were of gold; and he cast for them four sockets of silver. 37  And he made an hanging for the tabernacle door of blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine twined linen, of needlework; 38  And the five pillars of it with their hooks: and he overlaid their chapiters and their fillets with gold: but their five sockets were of brass.

Note here that the word vail is spelled with an a while it is spelled with an e elsewhere. 

Mark 15:38  And the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom.

Regardless of the spelling it is the same word. In the 1500s the word was spelled as veyle or vayle as a curtain or a covering.

During the 1500s there were great changes in the English language. The “Great English Vowel Shift” took place then and also because of printing technology that began in the 1400s there became fewer variations of written English. As time went by there was a push for spelling to be standardized, for there to be a right way to write something and a wrong way. You will find, in this English Bible, some spelling variations of words like this vail or the spelling of King Nebuchadnezzar’s name as Nebuchadrezzar. I think that if you look at the number of times a word is spelled a certain way you might see some deeper significance.


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