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14 With reeds make the box. קִנִּ֖ים תַּֽעֲשֶׂ֣ה אֶת־הַתֵּבָ֑ה
It’s a reasonably good guess that your (English) Bible does not have reeds in it. Truth be told, the Hebrew Bible doesn’t have them either. What does it have?
Alter: cells
NRSV: rooms
NJPS: compartments
Vulgate: mansiunculas
NETS: nests
I have to admit that my favorite of these attempts is mansiunculas, defined in my Latin dictionary as a little dwelling — the diminutive of mansio, get it? A mansion, but a tiny one. The most literal of these, however, is Greek νοσσιὰς ‘nests’. קִנִּ֖ים qinnim is the plural of קֵן qēn ‘a bird’s nest’. You don’t want, let’s say, a dog — let alone a giraffe — living in a bird’s nest, so you have to find an English word that solves the problem a little better.
I think NJPS compartments does the job reasonably well, though I myself would have chosen cabins. That’s what you have on a ship, after all. Perhaps compartments goes along with the realization that this thing is not a ship but a box. One thing the animals certainly can’t be living in is nests. Perhaps we can find qinnim somewhere else in a different context, with a better English translation to help us?
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