a tent-cloth: a single woven panel of fabric joined with others to roof or wall a tent
TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled
A yeriah is one length of cloth woven on a loom, made to be sewn or looped together with its fellows into the covering of a tent. It is not a small drape but a large structural sheet: the kind of heavy goat-hair or fine fabric that forms the roof and walls of a tent and keeps out sun, wind, and rain.
Most often the word names the cloth panels of the tabernacle, the portable tent where Israel worshiped in the wilderness. The instructions in Exodus count them carefully, give their exact length and width, and describe how loops and clasps fasten them into one continuous covering. Because the tabernacle was the holiest tent Israel knew, its panels became the most famous example of the word.
The same word also names the cloth of an ordinary tent. Nomads and shepherds lived under these panels, so the word can stand for the whole tent or even for home itself. When a poet pictures God stretching out the sky, he calls the heavens a tent-cloth spread overhead. The meaning never changes across these uses: in every case it is a woven sheet that forms part of a tent.
names a single woven panel, one length of cloth, several of which are joined edge to edge to form one large coveringExo 26:1Exo 26:2Exo 36:8
can be counted, measured, and coupled: each one has a fixed length and width, and the loops and clasps join them into a setExo 26:3Exo 26:4Exo 36:9
Both
both belong to the same picture of a tent: the panels are the cloth that makes up the covering of the tentExo 26:7
both serve as a poetic image of a frail, temporary home that is pitched and taken down, used together to picture a life or a nation suddenly undoneJer 4:20Jer 10:20
Names a single woven sheet of cloth, the actual fabric panel that is measured, joined to its neighbors, and looped together with clasps.Exo 26:2Exo 26:3
Used widely for any tent cloth, even far from worship: the goat-hair sheets of a nomad's tent, a poetic image of the sky stretched out like cloth, and the ruined tents of a defeated people.Psa 104:2Jer 4:20Hab 3:7
Both
In the tabernacle account the woven sheets are exactly what forms the dwelling's covering, so the two words describe the same sacred tent from different angles: the cloth and the structure it makes.Exo 26:1
Names the whole dwelling as a structure, the thing that is set up, anointed, taken down, and carried, not any one piece of its fabric.Exo 40:2Exo 40:18
Carries the religious weight of a place where God lives among his people, so it can stand for the sanctuary itself and even for any dwelling place.Exo 25:9Lev 15:31
פָּרֹכֶתthe inner veil that screened off the most holy place, a single ornate hanging rather than a structural roof-and-wall panel
Names the large woven sheets that form the tent itself: the ten linen panels (and the goat-hair panels over them) that are joined into the tabernacle's roof and walls.Exo 26:1Exo 26:7Exo 36:8
Used figuratively for any stretched-out tent cloth, so it pictures the sky spread like a tent and the collapse of a tent home, well beyond the sanctuary.Psa 104:2Isa 54:2Jer 10:20
Both
Both are cloth hangings built for the same tabernacle, made of fine twisted linen and the same blue, purple, and scarlet yarn.Exo 26:1Exo 26:31
Names one specific hanging: the inner veil that walls off the Most Holy Place, dividing the holy room from the room where the ark sits.Exo 26:31Exo 26:33
Functions as the boundary of God's immediate presence: the high priest passes it only on the Day of Atonement, and ordinary priests may not go behind it.Lev 16:2Lev 16:15Lev 21:23
מָסָךְthe screen or curtain hung at a doorway as a closure, not a panel forming the body of the tent
Names a woven panel or sheet that forms the body of the tent itself: the ten linen panels and the goats'-hair panels joined together to make the tabernacle's fabric.Exo 26:1Exo 36:8Num 4:25
Stands by extension for tent life and dwelling, the cloth a person lives under: David living among them, the ruined tent whose panels are torn down.2Sa 7:2Jer 4:20Jer 10:20
Carries a poetic reach the other word never has: God stretches out the heavens like a tent panel, and enlarged tent cloth pictures a people's growth.Psa 104:2Isa 54:2
Both
Both are woven textile pieces of the tabernacle, listed together among the cloth items the Levites carried and set up.Num 4:25
Names the linen screens that form the walls of the outer courtyard enclosure, hung on posts to fence off the court rather than roofing the sanctuary.Exo 27:9Exo 38:9
Stays a fixed technical term inside the tabernacle-building and Levite-service texts, measured out side by side around the perimeter and never used figuratively.Exo 27:12Num 3:26Num 4:26
Names the large woven sheets that make up the tent itself, the linen panels and the goat hair panels laid over them that form the sanctuary's roof and sides, so it encloses the structure instead of dividing it.Exo 26:1Exo 26:7Exo 36:8Exo 36:14
Comes as a countable, measurable set: each panel has a stated length and width, and loops and clasps join them edge to edge until the separate sheets become one covering.Exo 26:2Exo 26:3Exo 26:6Exo 26:10
Stands for tent living as a whole, so the cloth can name the sort of housing someone has: the Levites carry the panels when the tent is taken down, and David contrasts his cedar house with an ark still kept under cloth.Num 4:252Sa 7:21Ch 17:1
Ranges far outside the sanctuary as a poetic image of any stretched cloth or fragile home: the sky spread out overhead, the dark tent cloth of desert camps, and the sudden ruin of a household.Psa 104:2Sng 1:5Isa 54:2Jer 4:20Hab 3:7
Both
Both name cloth hung in the same sanctuary, one Testament apart. When Hebrews walks a reader through the tent that Exodus describes, the Greek word marks the hanging inside it while the Hebrew word names the fabric the tent is built from, so the two belong to one and the same building.Exo 26:1Heb 9:3
English Bibles render both words "curtain", which hides the difference that matters: one is the woven skin of the building, the other is the screen across the doorway into its innermost room. A reader who meets the same English word twice can easily think the torn curtain of the Gospels was a piece of the tent's outer covering.Exo 26:2Mat 27:51
Names one single hanging whose whole job is to block the way through into the innermost room, so it is spoken of as something you go behind or pass through rather than something a building is made out of.Heb 9:3Heb 6:19
Its tearing in two at the death of Jesus is reported as news in itself, because the thing that gave way was the one barrier keeping people out of the inner room.Mat 27:51Mrk 15:38Luk 23:45
Becomes a picture of the body of Jesus, the barrier his death opens up as a road into God's presence, a use that has nothing to do with cloth or building materials.Heb 10:20
What scholars say about yeri'ah
The lexica agree on the sense: BDB and HALOT both gloss יריעה as "curtain, tent-cloth," a single woven sheet (one panel of which several are joined to form a tent covering). The dominant attestation is the tabernacle pericope (Exodus 26; 36; Numbers 4:25), where the panels are enumerated with precise dimensions and fastening hardware. The word extends naturally to ordinary nomadic tents (Habakkuk 3:7, the tent-cloths of Midian/Cushan; Jeremiah 4:20; 10:20; 49:29), to Solomon's curtains (Song of Songs 1:5), and metonymically to the dwelling as a whole (Isaiah 54:2). The cosmic image in Psalm 104:2, where God stretches out the heavens like a yeriah, draws on the everyday picture of pitching a tent. The derivation is debated and contributes nothing to the sense; the referent is not in doubt.