Tongs

The umbrella collects the small gold implements used to tend the lampstand in the tabernacle and later in the temple. UPDV translates the same family of objects with two vocabularies — "snuffers" and "snuffdishes" for the tabernacle, "tongs" for the temple — but the function is one: handling the wicks and trimmings of the lamps without touching them by hand.

In the Tabernacle

The lampstand specification at Sinai includes its accessories among the items to be made of pure gold: "And its snuffers, and its snuffdishes, will be of pure gold" (Ex 25:38). The same items reappear in the marching orders for the Kohathites, who must wrap the lampstand and all its tools before transport: "And they will take a cloth of blue, and cover the lampstand of the light, and its lamps, and its snuffers, and its snuffdishes, and all the oil vessels of it, with which they minister to it" (Num 4:9). The implements are part of the lampstand's ministering kit — they are inventoried, wrapped, and carried with the lamps themselves.

In the Temple

Solomon's furnishings list, generations later, names the same implements with a different word in UPDV: "and the lampstands, five on the right side, and five on the left, before the oracle, of pure gold; and the flowers, and the lamps, and the tongs, of gold" (1 Kgs 7:49). The number of lampstands has multiplied to ten and the lamps and tongs are made all of gold, but the inventory still pairs lamps with the small instruments used to tend them.