miqshah

The lexica are agreed on the sense: BDB, HALOT, DCH and Gesenius18 all render מִקְשָׁה as "hammered work," and all nine occurrences sit inside the priestly tabernacle texts (Exod 25; 37; Num 8; 10), attached to the cherubim of the kapporet, the menorah, and the silver trumpets. The derivation is less settled. BDB files the noun under קשׁה "to be hard"; others prefer a root of striking or knocking (compare נקשׁ), and Gesenius18 records the uncertainty. Neither route bears on the agreed meaning, and none of the standard lexica proposes a competing sense. The Septuagint renders the term with the vocabulary of chased or engraved metalwork (τορευτός), indicating that the Alexandrian translators understood a struck and worked object rather than a poured one. Studies of the tabernacle furnishings, notably Carol Meyers's monograph on the menorah and Menahem Haran's treatment of the sanctuary appointments, read the word as a technical requirement that the object be raised from a single mass, a requirement the text itself makes explicit in Exod 25:36 and 37:22 (כֻּלָּהּ מִקְשָׁה אַחַת, "the whole of it one hammered piece"). What remains open is metallurgical rather than lexical: commentators such as Propp discuss whether a lampstand of a full talent of gold could realistically be raised by hammering alone, or whether a cast core with subsequent chasing lies behind the description. That debate concerns ancient workshop practice, not what the noun denotes.