Exodus 26:15

boards either beams or frames: -boards" suggests something much thinner than seems to be intended. The Heb. ḳéresh, except in the present connexion (50 times), occurs only Ezekiel 27:6, of some part of a ship, described there as made up of ivory, inlaid in boxwood (RV. benches, RVm. deck); and its exact sense is uncertain. Here it has commonly been rendered boards: but to this rend. Kennedy (p. 659 b) makes the pertinent objections that, if these -boards" are to support the curtains, the latter must hang down outside them: the boards, however, standing, as they are described, close to each other, would form, on the two sides and back of the Tabernacle, three solid wooden walls; if, then, the Dwelling on three, of its sides was formed of these wooden walls, it is difficult to understand how it can be consistently spoken of as formed by the curtains(v.1, &c.): and, moreover, if the sides of the Dwelling were thus solid, these richly worked curtains would be hidden from view, not only on the outside, as they would be in any case, by the curtain of goats" hair and the two skin coverings, but also on the inside (except on the roof). Hence Kennedy argues, with much force, that the ḳĕrâshimwere pictured, not as solid boards, but as wooden frames(as shewn in the illustr.), which, while affording sufficient support for the curtains and skin coverings, would allow the richly coloured tapestry curtains with their cherubim figures to appear inside the sanctuary. Kennedy's view undoubtedly brings a very great improvement into the idea of the Tabernacle: but the sense attached to ḳéreshbeing hypothetical, it is difficult to accept it quite unreservedly.

A -Frame," with its bases.

Reduced from Hastings" Dictionary of the Bible, iv. 660.

The thicknessof the ḳĕrâshimis not specified. Jos. (Ant.iii. 6. 3) gives it as 4 finger-breadths (3 in.): Rashi (11 cent.), Ew. al.suppose it to have been a cubit (18 in.). V.22 suggests that the writer pictured them as ½ a cubit (9 in.) thick: but even in this case, if they were solid, their dimensions being 15 ft. × 2 ft., 3 in. × 9 in., they would be so substantial as be beams rather than -boards."