to work colored threads into cloth: to produce a fabric patterned in more than one color
TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyStrong
Nearly every use of this word sits in the chapters of Exodus that describe the tent of meeting, and always with the same materials: blue, purple, and scarlet yarn worked into fine linen. It turns up three ways:
six times as a fixed label, marking a finished screen or sash as "the work of an embroiderer"
twice as the name of the craftsman himself, standing beside the carver and the designer in a list of trades
once outside Exodus, in a psalm, for a body being formed out of sight
What the craft actually involved is not settled. English Bibles usually say "embroiderer", which makes a reader picture stitching added to cloth that is already finished. Many specialists in ancient textiles read it instead as weaving that carries several colors from the start, a simpler job than the figured work of the designer (חָשַׁב), whose fabrics carried woven cherubim. Either way the point is color and pattern rather than the plain crossing of threads covered by another verb (אָרַג).
The one use outside the tabernacle turns the craft into a picture of a person. In Psalm 139:15 the speaker says he was worked in colors down in the depths of the earth, an image of a body assembled strand by strand where no one could watch. The matching noun for patterned material (רִקְמָה) keeps the same idea of many colors held in a single piece.
Nuances
1athe craft as a label for finished cloth: screens and sashes described as the work of a colored-thread worker
1bthe craftsman himself: the worker skilled in colored cloth, named in a list of tabernacle trades
Exo 35:35Exo 38:23
1cto be formed with intricate variety, said of a body put together out of sight
Psa 139:15*
Psa 139:15
How closely the weaving picture in Psalm 139:15 tracks the actual forming of a body, and what "the depths of the earth" refers to.
majorityThe verb is a metaphor for the hidden and skilful making of a person, and "the depths of the earth" stands parallel to "in secret" earlier in the verse as a figure for the womb.; Hans-Joachim Kraus, Psalms 60-150: A Commentary (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1989); HALOT, s.v. רקם
minorityThe color sense is pressed further, so the verb pictures the intricately varied tissue of the developing body itself.; Franz Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Psalms, vol. 3 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1889); BDB, s.v. רקם
Disputed
Whether the craft named by this word is embroidery worked with a needle onto finished cloth, or weaving that carries several colours from the start.
majorityPolychrome weaving. The participle names the maker of multicoloured but unfigured textiles, a technique ranked below the מַעֲשֵׂה חֹשֵׁב of the designer, whose fabrics carried figured motifs such as the cherubim of the inner curtains.; HALOT, s.v. רקם; Menahem Haran, Temples and Temple-Service in Ancient Israel (Oxford: Clarendon, 1978)
minorityEmbroidery in the strict sense: decorative stitching applied to an already woven ground, which is what the traditional English renderings of מַעֲשֵׂה רֹקֵם assume.; BDB, s.v. רקם
Names a worker in colored yarn without saying what tool he used, so it leaves open whether the pattern was stitched on or worked in as the cloth was made.Exo 38:23Exo 35:35
Reaches past cloth altogether to the forming of a human body.Psa 139:15
Both
Both name a skilled textile worker whose product is prized for its color and its pattern.Exo 26:36Exo 27:16
Only embroiderer
The English word pictures decorative needlework added to a finished piece, a technique the Hebrew does not commit to.
It suggests an ornamental extra, while these fabrics were working parts of the sanctuary and of the priest's clothing.
Names the work and the worker rather than the material, so it identifies who made a piece and what skill he brought to it, and it stands in the lists of tabernacle trades alongside carving and design work.Exo 35:35Exo 38:23
Every use of it but one belongs to the tent of meeting, covering the screens hung at its entrance and at the gate of its courtyard and the sash worn by the priests.Exo 26:36Exo 27:16Exo 28:39Exo 39:29
It can describe the making of a living body, with God as the one doing the work of forming a person out of sight.Psa 139:15
Both
Both belong to material in which several colors are worked into a single piece, and in both the result counts as costly and hard to produce.Exo 26:36Ezk 27:16
Both turn up where such material clothes someone being honored, whether the priest serving at the tent of meeting or the city God dresses like a bride.Exo 28:39Ezk 16:10
Names the finished material as something a person owns, so it can be worn, shipped as cargo, carried off as plunder, or stripped away in grief.Jdg 5:30Ezk 26:16Ezk 27:16
It reaches past cloth to anything patterned in more than one color, including the feathers of a great eagle and the stone David stockpiled for the temple.Ezk 17:31Ch 29:2
Its settings are royal and foreign wealth rather than sanctuary craft: a bride led to a king, and the luxury goods moving through a rich trading city.Psa 45:14Ezk 27:7
אָרַגplain weaving on a loom, which says nothing about color or pattern
Always involves color: every item it produces is made of blue, purple, and scarlet yarn set into fine linen, so the craft is named for its pattern rather than for the making of the cloth.Exo 26:36Exo 27:16Exo 36:37Exo 38:18
Its products are the decorated furnishings and trim of holy space rather than a garment's main fabric: the curtains hung at the tent door and the courtyard gate, and the priest's waistband.Exo 27:16Exo 28:39Exo 39:29Exo 38:23
Its one use away from the tabernacle turns the colored-thread craft into a picture of a person, a body put together strand by strand where nobody could watch.Psa 139:15
Both
Both name skilled cloth work that God equips craftsmen to do for the sacred tent, and one verse lists the two trades side by side.Exo 35:35
Both turn fine linen into finished items of the priests' clothing, one supplying the tunics and the other the sash worn with them.Exo 39:27Exo 39:29
Covers the plain crossing of threads on a loom, so what it makes is the body of a garment itself: the robe of the ephod and the priests' tunics are called simply "woven work", with no mention of color.Exo 39:22Exo 39:27Exo 28:32
Its loom was so familiar that the heavy beam of it became a stock comparison for the thickness of a giant's spear shaft.1Sa 17:72Sa 21:191Ch 11:231Ch 20:5
Carries a run of bleak word pictures: hair fastened into a loom to trap a man, a life snipped off the loom at death, and webs that can clothe nobody.Jdg 16:13Jdg 16:14Isa 38:12Isa 59:5
Names an everyday trade practiced well outside the sacred tent, including in a foreign economy and in an idolatrous workshop inside the temple.Isa 19:92Ki 23:7
חָשַׁבto plan and design; its worker made the figured fabrics of the tent of meeting, a step above colored work
Every use names a physical piece of colored handiwork. The word never reaches into thinking, planning or reckoning.Exo 26:36Exo 28:39Exo 39:29
It is attached to a short, specific list of tabernacle items: the screen at the tent door, the screen at the courtyard gate, and the priest's sash. These are the plainly multicolored pieces, with no figures worked into them.Exo 26:36Exo 27:16Exo 36:37Exo 38:18
Its one use away from the sanctuary pictures a body being formed unseen in the womb as if it were intricate colored needlework.Psa 139:15
Both
Both name a recognized trade among the tabernacle craftsmen, and the two stand side by side in the same list of skills God fills workers with, alongside the engraver.Exo 35:35
Both are credited to the same man, Oholiab, so one worker could hold both skills even though the text keeps them as separate specialties.Exo 38:23
Both work the same materials, the blue and purple and scarlet yarn with fine linen, so what separates them is the kind of work done, not the thread in hand.Exo 35:35Exo 38:23
Most of its uses have nothing to do with craft at all. It is the ordinary word for thinking something out and forming a plan, including a plan hatched against somebody.Gen 50:20Jer 18:11Mic 2:1Psa 35:4
It is the word for counting one thing as another, whether crediting something to a person or refusing to hold a fault against him.Gen 15:6Psa 32:22Sa 19:19Isa 40:17
It covers plain arithmetic and the settling of accounts: working out the years left before land returns to its owner, or auditing money handed to builders.Lev 25:27Lev 27:182Ki 12:152Ki 22:7
It can mean sizing a person up and getting them wrong, taking someone for what they are not.Gen 38:151Sa 1:13Isa 53:4
Where it does name a craft, it is the designer who works figures into the fabric, the curtains and priestly garments carrying woven cherubim, and the same word covers designing in gold, silver, bronze and cut stone.Exo 26:1Exo 26:31Exo 28:6Exo 31:4
raqam in the other biblical languages
ποικίλοςGreek“various”the Greek word for "varied" or "of many kinds"; Greek translators used its related noun for this craft, but the New Testament uses it of variety in general rather than of colored cloth
It names a trade someone practices. In the tabernacle chapters it stands as a job title beside the carver and the designer, one of the skills God gifted workers to do.Exo 35:35Exo 38:23
It stays fixed to real cloth and real color: blue, purple, and scarlet yarn worked into fine linen for the screen at the tent door, the gate hanging of the courtyard, and the priest's sash.Exo 26:36Exo 27:16Exo 28:39
It can be turned on a person. In one psalm the speaker says he was worked in colors down in the depths of the earth, a picture of a body being put together strand by strand where nobody could watch.Psa 139:15
Both
Both say that something is not all of one kind. The Hebrew makes the point out of materials, several colors carried in one hanging; the Greek states it flatly, one grace of God arriving in more forms than one.Exo 38:181Pe 4:10
The tie between them runs through the Greek Old Testament, where translators used this Greek word and its relatives for exactly this Hebrew craft, so the colored work of the tabernacle is where the Greek word's picture of variety comes from. By the New Testament the color has drained away and only the variety is left, which is why "manifold" and "various" translate one word that once meant "many-colored".Exo 39:291Pe 4:10
In the New Testament it never touches cloth or color. It simply counts kinds: sicknesses of many kinds carried to Jesus, cravings of many kinds that once ran people's lives, teachings of many kinds that pull a congregation off course.Mat 4:24Tit 3:3Heb 13:9
It falls on trouble and on gift alike. Trials of many kinds test faith, and the powerful acts by which God backed the message came in many kinds too.Jas 1:21Pe 1:6Heb 2:4
It describes rather than does. It never names work anyone performs; it always hangs on something else and tells you what assortment that thing comes in.Mrk 1:34Luk 4:402Ti 3:6
What scholars say about raqam
The lexica agree on the semantic field while differing on the technique. BDB glosses the root as "variegate" and treats the qal participle substantivally as "variegator, embroiderer"; HALOT gives "to weave in colours", with the pual of Ps 139:15 as "to be woven in colours"; DCH likewise groups the eight Exodus attestations under the participle used as a trade name. All eight belong to the tabernacle pericopes and share the fixed inventory of תְּכֵלֶת, אַרְגָּמָן, תּוֹלַעַת שָׁנִי and שֵׁשׁ מָשְׁזָר, six of them in the construction מַעֲשֵׂה רֹקֵם and two in the craft lists of Exod 35:35 and 38:23 alongside חָרָשׁ, חֹשֵׁב and אֹרֵג. Menahem Haran (Temples and Temple-Service in Ancient Israel) argues from that gradation that the רֹקֵם produced multicoloured but unfigured textiles, ranked below the מַעֲשֵׂה חֹשֵׁב of the designer, whose fabrics carried figured motifs such as the cherubim of the inner curtains; Nahum Sarna's JPS Exodus follows the same hierarchy of sanctuary textiles. On Ps 139:15 the commentators take רֻקַּמְתִּי as a figure for embryonic formation, disagreeing chiefly over how far the colour component of the root is being pressed and over the referent of תַּחְתִּיּוֹת אָרֶץ; Kraus reads it as a poetic parallel to בַסֵּתֶר, while the older exegetical tradition represented by Delitzsch presses the variegation of the developing body itself.
Sources
Ludwig Koehler and Walter Baumgartner, The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament (HALOT), s.v. רקםlexicon
Francis Brown, S. R. Driver and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (BDB), s.v. רקםlexicon
David J. A. Clines, ed., The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew (DCH), s.v. רקםlexicon
Menahem Haran, Temples and Temple-Service in Ancient Israel (Oxford: Clarendon, 1978)monograph