Curtain (Hastings' Dictionary)

1. The ordinary tent of the Semitic nomad, in modem times, is made by sowing to- gether a number of narrow lengths of a water- resisting' material, as a rule cloth woven from yarn of goats' and camels' hair mixed with sheeps' wool. And so it must have been in ancient times. Hence we read of a Heb. country maid being ' bhick as the tents of Kedar' (Ca 1°). The name of ilicjp lengths of tent-cloth was in the lleb. niy'"!; (AV and KV ' curtains '). The weaving of them, as well as the previous spinning of the yam, was and is one of the chief occupations of the women of the tribe (Ex SS"-'"; Palmer, Desert of the Exudm, i. pp. 81, 125 ; Doughty, see footnote). With a more advanced civilization men also took to weaving as a trade (1 Ch 4") ; indeed this particular branch, the weaving of goats' hair cloth, 18 well known to have been one of the staple industries of Tarsus, which has led many scholars to interpret (rK-rfu 01x0^6% (Ac 18) as ' a weaver of tent- cloth ' (see art. ' Paulus ' in PRE? xi. 359).t In OT we find that ten of these yiri'Oth or curtains, of special width and workmanship, were to be ' coupled together,' in two sets of fave, to form the innermost covering of the tabernacle proper (the Mishkdn), as given in detail Ex 26"'-. Above this was a more ordinary covering, composed of eleven curtains of the usual goats' hair, and constituting the "^riN or tent of the tabernacle (Ex 26'"). Eor further particulars about these curtains see 'rABEK- NACLE. Yirf6th is also used in OT of the curtains or tent-cloth of ordinary nomad tents (Jer 49^) and of the gala-tents of king Solomon (Cal'), and often stands in poetic parallelism with Sni< 'tent,' Is 54, Jer 4' 10^, Hab 3'. The sing. n:;-i; is even used of the tent erected by David for the ark on Mt. Zion, 2 S T'' (LXX iy lUaif r^t HK-qrqi, but 1 Ch 17' niv'i; plur. ). 2. In AV the portii'-re ('^?c) which closed the entrance to the Holy Place of the tabernacle, and is elsewhere in AV ti^ ' hanging,' is once rendered curtain (Nu 3^). The same Heb. word is also applied to the similar curtain at the entrance of the court of the tabernacle. The uniform tr"" in UV is 'screen,' even when the name is ajjulied to the ' veil of the screen ' which separated the Holy Place from the Holy of Holies, cf. Ex 26 35'" etc. See further Tabkhnacle. 3. Is 40 the word tr^ curtain (p'l) seems from its etymology to denote some fine material such as gauze (so KVm, Dillm., Duhm). 4. In the Hook of Judith we read of Holofemes possessing a very magnificent kuvuviXov (EV 'canopy,' Jth 10' 13» " lli"') 'of purple and gold and emerald and precious stones inwoven.' '1 his, as the name and the context of 1(J' imply, must have been a mosquito-curtain. See CANtirv. A. R. S. Kennedy.