Exodus 26:3

26:3 Five curtains are to be joined, ¹  one to another, ²  and the other ³  five curtains are to be joined, one to another.

Exodus 26:6

26:6 You are to make fifty gold clasps and join the curtains together with the clasps, so that the tabernacle is a unit. ⁴ 

¹ tn This is the active participle, not the passive. It would normally be rendered “joining together.” The Bible uses the active because it has the result of the sewing in mind, namely, that every curtain accompanies another (U. Cassuto, Exodus, 348).

² tn Heb “a woman to her sister,” this form of using nouns to express “one to another” is selected because “curtains” is a feminine noun (see GKC 448 §139.e).

³ tn The phrase “the other” has been supplied.

⁴ tn Heb “one”; KJV “it shall be one tabernacle”; NRSV “that the tabernacle may be one whole”; NLT “a single unit.”