Exodus 25:5

5. Rams’ skins dyed red “These skins may have been tanned and coloured like the leather now known as red morocco, which is said to have been manufactured in Libya from the remotest antiquity . ” Speaker’s Commentary . Others have explained the words as meaning simply skins of red rams .

Badgers’ skins Besides the mention in Ezekiel 16:10, the word תחשׁ , here translated badger, occurs only in connexion with the curtains and coverings of the tabernacle. The Sept. and Vulg. seem to understand it as the name of a colour, hyacinthine. The Targum and the Syriac translate it by the word ססגונא , which Levy explains ( Chald . Worterbuch) as a red-spotted beast . Kitto’s Cyclopaedia maintains that it was probably an animal of the antelope tribe, but could not have been the badger, which is not found in Asia so far south as Palestine and Arabia . It is probably best understood of a kind of seal which is said to be found in the waters about Arabia . “The word bears a near resemblance to the Arabic tuchash, which appears to be the general name given to the seals, dugongs, and dolphins found in the Red sea, (Tristram,) and, according to some authorities, to the sharks and dog-fish. (Furst.) The substance spoken of would thus appear to have been leather formed from the skins of marine animals, which was well adapted as a protection against the weather. Pliny speaks of tents made of seal skins as proof against the stroke of lightning, ( Nat. Hist., 2: 56,) and one of these is said to have been used by Augustus whenever he travelled. The skins of the dolphin and dugong are cut into sandals by the modern Arabs, and this may explain Ezekiel 16:10. ” Speaker’s Commentary .

Shittim wood The wood of the acacia tree, a very hard and durable kind of tree which abounds in the Sinaitic peninsula .