to overlay a surface with a thin applied layer, especially to plate wood or stone with metal
TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled
This is a craftsman's word. It describes covering the outside of one thing with a layer of another, almost always plating a wooden or stone core with metal so that what you see is the precious surface rather than the cheaper material underneath. It is the verb behind the gold-covered furniture of the tabernacle and the gold-lined walls of Solomon's temple.
The layer is usually gold, but the word does not require it. The same action can be done with cedar paneling over stone walls, with precious stones set across a surface, or even with a thin wash of silver. What stays constant is the idea of a covering coat: a surface deliberately overlaid to change how it looks and what it is worth.
Because the result is an attractive skin over a plainer body, the word also lends itself to a warning. A pot can be glazed to look like fine metal, and a smooth coat can hide what a thing really is underneath.
Nuances
1ato plate or overlay an object with gold (or other metal)
Names the work of plating a surface with metal: hammering or fastening gold, silver, or bronze over wood or stone.Exo 25:111Ki 6:20
Belongs to the language of sacred craftsmanship, used again and again for overlaying the ark, the altar, and the temple in costly metal.Exo 30:32Ch 3:61Ki 10:18
Both
Both describe covering a surface with an applied outer layer rather than building the surface itself.Lev 14:43Exo 26:29
Names the wet, troweled coating of a soft material: mud, lime, or whitewash spread over a wall and left to harden.Lev 14:42Lev 14:48
Carries a figurative bite the metal word never does: a flimsy coat that hides a fault or props up a lie, like whitewash slapped over a crumbling wall.Ezk 13:10Ezk 13:11Ezk 22:28
Can describe a film over the eyes that dulls sight, an extension of the idea of smearing something over a surface.Isa 44:18
This is the fixed workshop word of the tabernacle and temple instructions, repeated for chest, poles, table, frames, pillars, altars and doors, and it normally names the metal used, whether gold, bronze or silver.Exo 25:11Exo 26:29Exo 27:2Exo 38:281Ki 6:20
Only this word is turned into a picture of a coating that misleads, cheap clay dressed up with a silvery glaze so it passes for something better.Pro 26:23
It also covers the reverse action, since a layer applied this way can later be peeled back off, as when a king stripped the metal he had once put on the temple doors.2Ki 18:16
Both
Both mean laying gold over the surfaces of a sacred building, and the temple account in 2 Chronicles 3 moves between them for the same work.2Ch 3:72Ch 3:82Ch 3:62Ch 3:10
Both picture a thin bright skin spread over a plainer material, so what the eye sees is not what the thing is made of.Psa 68:131Ki 10:18
Only this word describes the covering of the head as a public sign of grief or disgrace, a gesture people make with a cloak or their hands rather than a job done to an object.2Sa 15:30Est 6:12Jer 14:3Jer 14:4
It is used of covering a person's face, the act that marks a condemned man as already finished.Est 7:8
tsaphah in the other biblical languages
περικαλύπτωGreek“to cover”the Greek verb for covering something over or around, used of plating or encasing a surface, as of the gold-covered ark in Hebrews
Always the craftsman's act of plating an object with metal, bonding a layer of gold, silver, or bronze over wood or stone so the surface gleams.Exo 25:111Ki 6:21
Centers on the furnishings of worship: the ark, the altars, the tabernacle boards, and later the temple are all sheathed by it.Exo 30:32Ch 3:6
Both
Both name a covering laid completely over a surface so it is encased rather than merely draped. The Greek word describes the ark as overlaid on every side with gold, the same all-around metal sheathing the Hebrew word commands for the ark in Exodus.Exo 25:11Heb 9:4
Reaches beyond objects to people: it can mean to cover a person's face, as when Jesus is blindfolded so he cannot see who strikes him.Mrk 14:65Luk 22:64
What scholars say about tsaphah
The standard lexica (HALOT, BDB, DCH) treat H6823 as a single verb meaning to lay over or plate, occurring chiefly in the intensive stem with the sense of overlaying an object with gold or other material; it is to be distinguished from the homographic root meaning to watch or look out. The overwhelming distribution in Exodus and the temple accounts of Kings and Chronicles fixes the core sense as metal-plating of cultic and royal objects. Proverbs 26:23 applies it to a silver-dross coating over earthenware. Isaiah 21:5 is text-critically debated: the consonants can be read with this root as spreading or laying out a covering, while the traditional reading takes a separate watch root; many modern editors and commentators favor reading the cover sense or emend the line.