Exodus 25:4
And blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine linen, and goats' hair,
And blue, and purple, and scarlet,.... The Jewish doctors are much divided about the sense of the words so rendered by us; some will have one colour, and some another meant; but, according to those learned men, who have taken much pains in searching into the meaning of them, as Bochart and Braunius, it appears that our version of them is most correct: and by these we are not to understand the colours themselves, which could not be brought, nor even the materials for dying them are intended; but wool, or clothes, either silken or linen of those colours: of the former the apostle has taught us to expound them, Hebrews 9:19 and so Jarchi interprets them of wool thus died, and Josephus {a} also; which was made up into yarn, and wove, and was much used in the garments of the priests, in the curtains of the tabernacle, and in the vail between the holy and the most holy place:
and fine linen; the best of which was made in Egypt only, as Aben Ezra says, and much wore there, especially by the priests; and they had such an abundance of it that they traded to other nations with it, see
Isaiah 19:9 and of which the Israelites might bring a considerable quantity with them out of Egypt; and
goats' hair; though the word hair is not in the text, it is rightly supplied, as it is by the Septuagint version, and others, for not goats themselves, but their hair must be meant; of this the curtains for the covering of the tabernacle were made; Jarchi interprets it the down of goats, the short, small, fine hair that grows under the other.
{a} Antiqu. l. 3. c. 6. sect. 1.