1. to be priests to Me. Everywhere except perhaps in this chapter, the verb kihen is intransitive and means “to perform the functions of a priest (kohen).” Here, however, the infinitive has an accusative suffix and so might mean “to make him a priest.” In any case, the transformation of Moses’s brother and nephews into a distinctive sacerdotal caste is the burden of this passage, and it is the brilliant priestly costume—note the refrain in verse 2 and verse 40, “for glory and for splendor”—that most impressively effects this transformation.

3. wise-hearted . . . wisdom. The Hebrew for “wise/wisdom” suggests both a craftsman’s skill and insight or understanding.

4. breastplate and ephod and robe and checkwork tunic. The ancient audience of this text had an immense advantage over modern readers because it would have had some actual glimpses of all this splendid raiment and priestly ornamentation and thus would have had a concrete notion of what was being referred to. There have been endless latter-day efforts to reconstruct the wardrobe and to parse the technical sartorial terms that are used to represent it, but these can be no more than amalgams of guesses and approximations. Though the present translation assumes that “breastplate” is still plausible for the Hebrew ḥoshen (etymology uncertain), others contend it is a smaller “breastpiece” or even a “pouch.” The ephod (the Hebrew root suggests “binding” or “wrapping around”) evidently was a kind of apron, although opinions differ on this. It has a secondary meaning as an oracular device.

9. the names of Israel’s sons. Here the recurrent ethnic designation beney yisraʾel clearly refers to the twelve sons of Jacob who are the eponymous founders of the twelve tribes of Israel. This, too, reflects a momentous transformation, enshrined in the magic of the cult: the twelve sons of Jacob have become a consecrated people whose special status before the deity is evoked, “remembered,” ritually enacted and confirmed in the engravings on the two precious stones in the priest’s shoulder-pieces that he carries before the LORD.

15. a breastplate of judgment. The judgment (mishpat) function of the breastplate is executed through the Urim and Thummim (verse 30) that are set in it. Because the purpose of this device is oracular, some prefer to render mishpat as “decision,” although there is evidence elsewhere that the Urim and Thummim were often used to determine who was guilty of a particular trespass.

17–20. ruby, topaz, and malachite . . . jasper. For all the scholarly recourse to conjectured etymologies and comparative philology, it is virtually impossible to determine precisely what precious stones are referred to in this list of twelve terms. We can do little more than revel in the gorgeousness of the words, which is surely part of the intended response for the ancient audience.

21. according to the names of Israel’s sons. The stones offer a reduplication—reinforcing the ritual efficacy—of the device of incising the names of the twelve tribes: in the first instance, six names were listed on each of two stones; now every tribe has its own precious stone.

29. over his heart. “Heart” of course here means “chest,” but the resonance of the term as the organ of feeling and understanding should not be lost.

30. the Urim and the Thummim. The precise character of this oracular device has eluded identification. One common conjecture is that they were two stones with different letters or words engraved on them, but unless someone actually digs up a pair, there is no way of proving this conjecture. Traditional interpretation associates the two words with roots that mean “light” and “perfection,” but if they are opposites, they could be linked etymologically with terms suggesting “curse” and “innocence.” It is probably not coincidental that these two words begin respectively with the first and the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet. In any case, most of the references to the Urim and Thummim in narrative passages invite the inference that the device generated a binary response to whatever question was posed: yes or no, guilty or innocent.

32. like the opening of a coat of mail. This is a prevalent traditional interpretation, but the crucial term in the phrase, taḥra, does not appear elsewhere and is of uncertain etymology and meaning.

34. A golden bell and a pomegranate, a golden bell and a pomegranate. The sheer splendor of the ornamentation is evoked in poetic incantation through the repetition of the phrase. Judah Halevi, the great medieval Hebrew poet, echoes these words in a delicate, richly sensual love poem, registering an imaginative responsiveness to the sumptuous sensuality of the language here.

35. so that its sound be heard . . . that he shall not die. In the ancient Near East, the inner sanctum was a dangerous place. Any misstep or involuntary trespass of the sacred paraphernalia could bring death. (Compare verse 38: the device with the divine name on Aaron’s golden diadem carries away any guilt that may be incurred in violating “the holy things that the Israelites consecrate.”) The sound of the ringing golden bells on Aaron’s hem goes before him as he enters the sanctum, serving an apotropaic function to shield him from harm in this zone of danger.

36. diadem. This is another term about which there is dispute. The primary meaning of the Hebrew tsits is “blossom,” and so this might be a blossom-shaped gold ornament bound upon the forehead, of the sort the Egyptians were known to use. In poetry, tsits appears in parallelism with nezer, “crown.”

38. any guilt. If, for example, an Israelite consecrated to the cult an animal marred by a blemish, “guilt” would be incurred.

41. install them. The literal meaning of the Hebrew is “fill their hands.”

42. linen breeches to cover their naked flesh. Breeches were not worn except by the priestly officials. The need to avoid exposing nakedness in the cult was asserted earlier in 20:26. The Hebrew term here is literally “flesh of the nakedness,” the word for nakedness, ʿerwah, referring specifically to the genitalia and strongly associated with forbidden sexuality.

43. that they do not bear guilt and die. The phrase used pointedly puns on “bear off . . . guilt” in verse 38. In the first instance, the idiom means to remove guilt. Here, antithetically, it means to bear the onus of guilt. Even the golden diadem engraved with the divine name would not protect the priest from harm if he were to violate the sanctity of the Tabernacle by exposing his sexual parts as he performed his priestly functions.