a sling: the leather-strap weapon that whirls a stone and hurls it at a target.
TranslatabilityDirectCertaintySettled
A sling was one of the ancient world's real weapons, not a toy. It was a strip of leather or cloth with a wide pouch in the middle: the user set a stone in the pouch, whirled it overhead, and released one end so the stone flew with deadly speed and accuracy. This is the weapon the young David carried when he faced Goliath, choosing smooth stones from a streambed and dropping the giant with a single shot.
Armies took the sling seriously. It turns up among the military gear stockpiled for war, listed alongside shields, spears, helmets, and bows. The fixed phrase "sling stones" simply means the stones made or gathered to be slung.
The word also lends itself to a vivid picture of safety and danger. In one scene a woman assures a hunted man that God will keep his life safe and bound up with the living, while flinging his enemies away as a stone is flung from the pocket of a sling.
the hangings: lengths of woven linen hung between posts to fence in the tabernacle courtyard.
TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled
These were not decorative drapes but the linen wall of the sacred courtyard. Long panels of finely woven fabric were hung between upright posts to enclose the open-air space around the tabernacle, marking off holy ground from common ground and screening the interior from view.
The word is carefully kept apart from its neighbors in the very passages that describe the sanctuary. The single screen drawn across the courtyard gate, and the screen closing the tent's doorway, are a different word (מָסָךְ); the curtains that formed the tent-dwelling itself, its fabric roof and sides, are yet another (יְרִיעָה); and the veil dividing the inner room from the most holy place is a third (פָּרֹכֶת). This word is reserved for the run of hangings along the courtyard's perimeter.
One puzzling verse stretches the same word to something else entirely: the folding leaves, or panels, of a temple door. That single use is unusual and its wording is uncertain, so it stands on its own.
In Hebrew the word specifically names the woven linen screens that fenced the tabernacle courtyard and marked off holy ground.Exo 27:9
Both
Both refer to lengths of cloth hung up to enclose or screen off a space.Exo 27:9
Only hangings
The English word "hangings" can suggest decorative drapery or tapestry hung indoors, losing the sense of an outdoor perimeter wall.
“curtains”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
How qela differs from similar Hebrew words
יְרִיעָהthe curtains that formed the tabernacle's tent itself, its fabric roof and sides, whereas the hangings are the fence of linen around the courtyard outside it
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
Both
Both are woven fabric panels built into the tabernacle, hung to enclose and mark off sacred space.Exo 26:1Exo 27:9
Both are made of the same fine twined linen and set up as parts of the one construction project the book of Exodus describes together.Exo 36:8Exo 38:9
Names the plain woven linen panels that form the outer wall of the courtyard, the perimeter fence enclosing the whole sanctuary compound out in the open air.Exo 27:9Exo 38:9
Comes in measured runs hung along the pillars of the court, so it is counted by length and stretched across each side rather than being one fixed panel.Exo 27:11Exo 38:16
Both
Both are fabric hangings within the tabernacle complex that partition sacred space, cloth barriers dividing one degree of holiness from another.Exo 40:21Num 3:26
Names the single inner veil that screens the innermost room of the sanctuary, the barrier between the Holy Place and the Most Holy Place that hides the ark from view.Exo 26:33Exo 40:3
Marks the threshold of restricted access: the priests serve on its outer side, and only once a year does the high priest carry blood past it, so the word itself signals the limit of who may draw near.Lev 16:2Lev 4:6
Names a physical object a person can pick up, carry, and stock: David takes his sling in his hand along with five smooth stones, and Uzziah's armory lays in stones for slinging beside the shields and spears.1Sa 17:401Sa 17:502Ch 26:14
Supplies a stock image through the stone that belongs to it. Against the great sea creature slingstones count for no more than straw, and a promise of victory says the fighters will trample the stones shot at them.Job 41:28Zec 9:15
Carries a second sense with no weapon in it at all: the long lengths of woven linen, measured out in cubits and hung on posts, that fence in the tabernacle courtyard, and the folding panels of a temple door.Exo 27:9Exo 38:9Num 3:261Ki 6:34
Both
One verse holds both words in a single image, and it is the clearest place to see how they fit together: Abigail tells David that the lives of his enemies will be slung away out of the hollow of a sling.1Sa 25:29
Both words also turn up in the accounts of building Israel's sanctuary, where neither has anything to do with warfare: one for figures cut into the temple's woodwork, the other for the linen screening the courtyard. Meeting either word in Exodus or 1 Kings, do not assume a weapon is in view.1Ki 6:32Exo 27:11
Names the act of slinging as a piece of marksmanship: the whirl, the release, and the hit on a chosen target. Benjamin's left-handed fighters could sling a stone at a hair and not miss, and David's one shot from the brook lands in Goliath's forehead.Jdg 20:161Sa 17:49
Takes people as what is thrown, so the picture becomes God flinging a whole population out of the land it stands on, with the same speed and the same helplessness the stone has.Jer 10:18
Carries a second, entirely different sense in the temple building account, where it means cutting figures into wood so that palms, flowers, and winged creatures stand out from the panels and doors. Nothing is thrown at all.1Ki 6:291Ki 6:321Ki 6:35
qela in the other biblical languages
καταπέτασμαGreek“curtain”the great woven veil hanging inside the Jerusalem temple that screened the most holy place, whereas the hangings screen the outer courtyard rather than the inner sanctuary
The hangings form the outer perimeter of the courtyard, a continuous wall of woven linen that fenced the whole open court and marked the boundary between the sacred precinct and common ground.Exo 27:9Exo 38:9
They are measured in long runs of cubits and strung across rows of posts, working as an architectural enclosure rather than a single dividing screen.Exo 27:11Exo 27:12Exo 38:12
Both
Both are lengths of woven fabric hung to screen off sacred space, a barrier that keeps holy ground from being freely crossed and guards where God's holiness is set apart.Exo 27:9Heb 9:3
The veil is the innermost barrier, hung directly before the Most Holy Place where God's presence dwells, so that crossing it meant entering the one room a person could not normally approach.Heb 9:3Heb 6:19
Its tearing carries redemptive weight: torn in two at the death of Jesus, it signals that the way into God's presence has been opened.Mat 27:51Mrk 15:38Heb 10:20
What scholars say about qela
The form represents two unrelated homonyms. The first, a sling, is the shepherd's and warrior's weapon and appears in the set phrase "sling stones"; it has a widely recognized cognate in the sense of hurling or slinging. The second is a hanging or screen, used in the priestly descriptions of the tabernacle for the woven linen curtains that enclosed the courtyard, and consistently held distinct from the gate screen and the tent curtains. A well-known difficulty is 1 Kings 6:34, where the plural of the second word appears for the folding leaves of a temple door, standing parallel in the same verse to a near-homophone; the standard lexicons register the sense while noting the textual uncertainty.
Sources
HALOT (Koehler-Baumgartner), s.v. קֶלַע I, IIlexicon