complete verse (Exodus 26:19)

Following are a number of back-translations as well as a sample translation for translators of Exodus 26:19:

  • Kupsabiny: “and make forty silver things which those frames will stand on. And each of those frames will stand on two of those things and be fixed firmly using two pegs.” (Source: Kupsabiny Back Translation)
  • Newari: “Make forty sockets of silver under the twenty planks. Two-two sockets under each plank.” (Source: Newari Back Translation)
  • Hiligaynon: “These boards will-be-inserted into 40 silver bases — two bases for each board.” (Source: Hiligaynon Back Translation)
  • Bariai: “And also, make forty silva post bases to be for standing up the bones of the walls. And on each of the pieces of wall bones, you must put two silva bases each.” (Source: Bariai Back Translation)
  • Opo: “and pound gold white, make it for its planting-holes. Make hole two for building-wood one.” (Source: Opo Back Translation)
  • English: “Tell them to make 40 silver bases to go underneath them. Two bases will go under each frame. The projections at the bottom of each frame are to be made to fit into the bases.” (Source: Translation for Translators)

Translation commentary on Exod 26:18 - 26:19

You shall make the frames for the tabernacle seems to be an unnecessary repetition, but it introduces the details mentioned in verses 18-22. Revised Standard Version uses the colon to indicate this, but this is a punctuation mark that is not read aloud. New American Bible makes this understood: “Set up the boards of the Dwelling as follows:….” Good News Translation leaves implicit the information that the frames are for the Tabernacle.

Twenty frames for the south side indicates that the length of the tabernacle was to be twenty times the width of each frame (1.5 cubits), or thirty cubits in all (about forty-five feet, or 13.7 meters). Two words are used for south, literally “for the side of the Negeb toward the right.” The basic orientation was facing the east, so south was on the right, and the Negeb was the name for the desert area south of Palestine. (See the introductory comment above.)

And forty bases of silver you shall make uses another word whose meaning is not clear. Bases is translated as “pedestals” in New American Bible and Durham, and as “sockets” in New Jewish Publication Society’s Tanakh, Revised English Bible, and others. The context is clear, however, that these were to be the silver pieces or “stands” (Contemporary English Version) into which the tenons at the bottom of each frame were to be inserted. You shall make does not indicate how these bases were to be made, but 38.27 tells us they were made by “casting,” or by pouring melted silver into a mold. The fact that there were forty bases means that there was one base for each tenon, or two bases under one frame for its two tenons. The repeated phrase, and two bases under another frame … simply means, as Good News Translation expresses it, that there were to be “two bases under each frame.”

Quoted with permission from Osborn, Noel D. and Hatton, Howard A. A Handbook on Exodus. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 1999. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .