warp: the lengthwise threads stretched on a loom, across which the crosswise threads are woven
A weaver starts by stretching one set of threads lengthwise and pulling them taut so they hold their shape. A second set is then run back and forth across them, over and under, and cloth is made. This word names that first set, the lengthwise threads. Its partner, עֵרֶב, names the crosswise ones.
It never turns up outside a single law, and never without that partner. Leviticus 13 tells a priest what to do when a greenish or reddish patch breaks out in clothing. Naming both sets of threads is a way of saying "the cloth, right through its weave": the question is whether the spot sits on the surface or has gone down into the fabric, and whether it comes back after a wash. A different Hebrew word, מַסֶּכֶת, names the piece of weaving itself as it sits on the loom, the web Delilah wove Samson's hair into (Judges 16:13).
How certain is "warp"? Less certain than the older translations make it sound. Mold does not creep along the threads running one way and skip the ones crossing them. And Leviticus 13:56 has the priest tear the trouble out of the garment, or the leather, or the warp, or the woof, as though each were a separate item you could handle on its own. For that reason a number of modern versions drop the picture of thread directions altogether and render the pair as two kinds of cloth, "woven or knitted material." The standard Hebrew lexicons still give "warp," and that is still the majority reading, but what the word actually pointed to is genuinely unsettled.
Disputed
Whether the word names the lengthwise threads of a woven cloth (the warp), or rather one of two kinds of textile material.
- majorityIt names the warp, the lengthwise threads stretched on the loom, in fixed pairing with the woof, the crosswise threads. This is the reading of the ancient versions, which used the ordinary Greek and Latin weaving terms, and of the standard Hebrew lexicons.; BDB, s.v. שְׁתִי; HALOT, s.v. שְׁתִי
- minorityThe word and its partner name two kinds of woven material rather than the two thread directions of one cloth. A fungal outbreak could not affect the threads running one way while sparing those crossing them, and Leviticus 13:56 presupposes items separable from one another; hence the rendering "any woven or knitted material."; René Péter-Contesse and John Ellington, A Handbook on Leviticus (UBS Helps for Translators; New York: United Bible Societies, 1990), on Leviticus 13:48