Catholic Commentary
The Screen at the Entrance of the Tent
37He made a screen for the door of the tent, of blue, purple, scarlet, and fine twined linen, the work of an embroiderer;38and the five pillars of it with their hooks. He overlaid their capitals and their fillets with gold, and their five sockets were of bronze.
Exodus 36:37–38 describes the construction of the entrance screen to the Tabernacle tent, made from blue, purple, scarlet, and fine linen with embroidered work, supported by five gold-crowned pillars set in bronze sockets. The materials and design symbolized God's heavenly transcendence, kingship, redemptive sacrifice, and holiness, with the gold and bronze elements representing a transition from judgment to divine glory.
The embroidered screen at the Tabernacle's entrance is not a barrier but a threshold—an invitation to enter God's presence through sacred order, and a prophecy of Christ's flesh as the door through which all are now welcome.
Verse 37: The Screen — Its Fabric and Artistry
The Hebrew word for "screen" here is masak, distinct from the inner veil (paroketh) that separated the Holy Place from the Holy of Holies (Exodus 26:31–33). The masak stood at the entrance of the tent proper — the first veil one would encounter after crossing the outer court. This positional distinction is theologically significant: whereas the inner veil barred all but the High Priest from the divine presence, this outer screen stood at a threshold that the priests themselves crossed daily in the course of their liturgical duties.
The four materials — blue (tekhelet), purple (argaman), scarlet (tola'at shani), and fine twined linen (shesh) — are not decorative choices but a liturgical grammar. These same materials appear throughout the Tabernacle instructions (Exodus 25–26) and in the vestments of the High Priest (Exodus 28). Blue, derived from a sea snail, evoked heaven and divine transcendence; purple, the color of royalty, proclaimed the kingly sovereignty of God; scarlet called to mind blood, sacrifice, and the covenantal bond; and fine white linen, requiring great skill to produce, signified purity and priestly holiness. Together, these four threads wove a visible theology — every glance at the screen was a catechetical moment, summing up the nature of the God who dwelt within: heavenly, kingly, redeeming, and holy.
The qualification "the work of an embroiderer" (ma'aseh roqem) further specifies the craftsmanship. Unlike the cherubim-woven inner veil, which was the "work of a skilled craftsman" (ma'aseh hoshev, implying a woven-through design), the outer screen's embroidery was applied to the surface of the fabric. This difference in technique — surface decoration versus interwoven imagery — reflects the gradation of holiness: the nearer to God's presence, the more intricate and complete the sacred symbolism. The embroiderer's art, with its patient threading of color into cloth, is an image of the gradual patterning of a soul by grace.
Verse 38: The Five Pillars — Gold Crowns, Bronze Feet
Five pillars (ammudim) supported the screen, fitted with hooks (vav) from which the curtain hung. The number five in the Tabernacle is consistent — five pillars also supported the outer court entrance (Exodus 27:16). Some Fathers and commentators have read a symbolic resonance in this number: the five books of Moses, the five wounds of Christ, or the Pentateuch as the architectural framework upon which the Law "hangs."
Each pillar received an overlay of gold on its capital (the crown, rosh) and its fillet (the connecting rod, hashuq), while its socket (eden) was cast in bronze. This contrast — gold above, bronze below — encodes a vertical theology. Bronze, used throughout the outer court (the altar of burnt offering, the laver), was associated with judgment, sacrifice, and earthly proximity; gold, reserved for the interior furnishings and the innermost sanctuary, signified divine glory and heavenly reality. The pillars thus stood as mediating columns, their feet planted in the realm of sacrifice and atonement (bronze/earth) while their heads crowned with glory (gold/heaven). They formed a visual catechesis for any priest who passed through: you enter from judgment into glory, from sacrifice into presence.
Typological and Spiritual Senses
The Church Fathers, reading in the allegorical tradition, understood the Tabernacle veils as figures of the flesh of Christ. Origen (Homilies on Exodus, 9) observed that the curtains of the Tabernacle represent the mysteries concealed within the humanity of Christ: just as the divine glory was hidden behind woven fabric, so the eternal Word was veiled within mortal flesh. The screen at the entrance points specifically to the Incarnation as the threshold event — the moment when humanity first gained lawful access to the presence of God through the humanity of Jesus. John Chrysostom drew a similar connection between the Tabernacle veil and the body of Christ, noting that the rending of the Temple veil at the Crucifixion (Matthew 27:51) was precisely the opening of that entrance screen to all the baptized.
The five pillars, their capitals crowned with gold, anticipate the five wounds of the crucified Christ — those glorified marks which, in the Resurrection, become the eternal "hooks" upon which the new covenant hangs. The Epistle to the Hebrews makes this typology explicit (Hebrews 10:19–20), describing the "new and living way" opened through the "veil," that is, through Christ's flesh.
Catholic tradition reads the Tabernacle not as a relic of ancient Israelite religion but as a divinely architected sign-system pointing toward the fullness of revelation in Christ and the Church. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that the Old Testament liturgical institutions "are prophecies" and that "the Church sees in them a figure of the sacramental economy" (CCC 1150). The screen at the entrance of the tent is a privileged instance of this principle.
St. Thomas Aquinas, in his Summa Theologiae (I-II, Q. 102, a. 4), treats the ceremonial precepts of the Old Law as containing a threefold figurative meaning: they prefigure Christ, they signify the moral life, and they anticipate the glory of heaven. The screen embodies all three senses: it figures Christ's flesh as the entrance to divine life; it signifies the moral necessity of purity and order in approaching God (the linen and the gradation of priestly access); and it anticipates the unveiled vision of the beatific glory for which the Church pilgrims.
The Letter to the Hebrews, the most sustained New Testament commentary on Tabernacle typology, identifies Christ himself as both the High Priest who enters the Holy of Holies and the "veil" through whom that entrance is made possible (Heb 10:19–22). The Second Vatican Council's Sacrosanctum Concilium (§5) echoes this by affirming that the work of redemption is carried out through the liturgy — that every time the Church gathers for worship, she passes, as it were, through the sacred screen into the presence of God. The embroidered colors further resonate with the Church's liturgical palette: the blue-purple of Advent, the royal purple of penance, the scarlet of martyrdom and Pentecost, the white of priestly holiness and Easter — a legacy traceable, through liturgical tradition, to this very veil.
Contemporary Catholics encounter the reality of this screen every time they enter a church. The narthex, the nave, the sanctuary rail or step, the tabernacle curtain — these are not merely architectural conventions but theological inheritances from the Tabernacle's graduated holiness. When a Catholic genuflects before entering a pew, or when a priest reverences the altar before beginning Mass, these gestures enact the same truth embodied by the embroidered screen: that approaching God requires passage through a threshold, a moment of conscious transition from the ordinary to the sacred.
More personally, this screen speaks to the spiritual discipline of interior thresholds. Before prayer, before reception of the Eucharist, before reading Scripture, the soul needs its own "screen" — a pause, an act of recollection, a crossing-over from distraction into presence. St. Teresa of Ávila and St. John of the Cross both describe the interior life as a series of "mansions" or "dwellings," each requiring a deeper surrender at the door. The embroiderer's patient craft is an image of lectio divina and contemplative prayer: threading the colors of faith, hope, and charity into the fabric of daily life, one deliberate pass at a time.