Wyjścia 26:3 Komentarz: Rashi, Chizkuni, Sforno & Rashbam

תהיין חברת SHALL JOIN TOGETHER — They sewed them together with a needle, each five separately.

חוברות אשה אל אחותה, “shall be joined to one another.” According to Rashi, the “joining” is done my means of needle and thread (not clasps or loops). It was not practical to make these coverings out of a single piece of cloth.

חמש היריעות תהיין חוברות, the decorative weaving patterns of these curtains should match each curtain to its counterpart. This was the difference between the curtains covering the sanctuary and those covering the Holy of Holies. Even though in both instances, the presence of such angel-like shapes woven into the material of the curtains, suggested an extra terrestrial dimension, there was a difference between the way these figures were woven into the five curtains covering the Holy of Holies and the patterns woven into the curtains covering the sanctuary. The difference alluded to the different degree of sanctity of these two sections of the Tabernacle. [I do not know the author’s source for this assertion. Possibly, he derives this from the apparently unnecessary repetition of the words חמש היריעות and חמש יריעות without the prefix letter ה the second time. Ed.]

אשה אל אחתה ONE TO ANOTHER (lit., a woman to her sister) — This is the idiom of Biblical Hebrew — to speak thus about a thing that is of the feminine gender when it correlates it with a thing of the same kind. In the case of a thing that is masculine it uses the expression איש אל אחיו, lit., a man to his brother, as it is said, e. g. of the cherubim (Exodus 25:20) “and their faces were turned איש אל אחיו‎”.