a hook: one of the metal fittings on the tabernacle's pillars, from which its curtains and hangings were hung
This is a builder's word, and it belongs to a single project. Every use falls inside the account of the tabernacle: first the instructions God gives Moses for the tent and its courtyard, then the report that the work was carried out exactly as described. In each case the hooks sit on upright pillars, and in each case something hangs from them: the curtain screening the innermost room, the screen across the tent's doorway, or the woven panels that fenced the courtyard.
The metal follows how near the hooks stood to that innermost room, which is one of the quiet ways the account marks off degrees of holiness:
- gold for the hooks holding the curtain that screened the most holy place (Exodus 26:32)
- gold again for the hooks on the five pillars at the entrance of the tent (Exodus 26:37)
- silver for every hook on the pillars around the open courtyard outside (Exodus 27:17)
The word never appears for one hook by itself. It is always a set, made and installed together for a whole row of posts, and the account weighs the metal by the batch: of the silver collected in the census, 1,775 shekels went into making the courtyard hooks, plating the tops of the pillars, and banding them (Exodus 38:28). A hook here is less an object someone picks up than a fitting in a system.
Neighboring words do neighboring jobs. A clasp (קֶרֶס) joined one curtain panel to the next so the separate sheets became one covering, and a peg (יָתֵד) was driven into the ground to hold the tent's ropes taut. This word names the fitting on a post that let a finished hanging be suspended. It has nothing to do with the hook forced through a captive's nose or jaw (חַח), or with a fisherman's hook (חַכָּה).