Numbers 4:6 - Exposition

The covering of badgers' skins. Probably of sea-cow skins ( tachash ) , but see Exodus 25:5 . The Targum of Palestine, and the Septuagint, both render it "a covering of hyacinthine skin." The later Jews would have no knowledge of the marine animals common on the shores of the Red Sea. A cloth wholly of blue. This was the distinctive outer, and therefore Visible, covering of the most sacred thing, the ark.