Vail
The veil sits at two registers in Scripture: as a personal face-covering worn by women, prophets, and reading hearers, and as the curtain that separates the holy place from the most holy in tabernacle and temple. The two registers meet at the cross, where the temple-veil is rent top-to-bottom, and again in the apostolic writings, where the inner-sanctuary curtain becomes the figure for Christ's flesh and the heart-veil is taken away upon turning to the Lord.
A Covering for the Face
The earliest face-veils belong to the women of the patriarchal narratives. At Rebekah's first sight of her intended husband across the field she takes up her veil and covers herself: "It is my master. And she took her veil, and covered herself" (Gen 24:65). Tamar, having put off the garments of her widowhood, covers herself with her veil and wraps herself, sitting in the gate of Enaim by the way to Timnah (Gen 38:14); when the encounter is over she rises, puts off her veil from her, and resumes her widow's garments (Gen 38:19). Boaz at the threshing-floor presses Ruth's outer mantle into service as a grain-carrier — "Bring the mantle that is on you, and hold it" — and measures six measures of barley onto it (Ruth 3:15), exhibiting the same upper-body cloth as a personal covering pressed to a moment's use.
The prophetic register turns the veil into a target of judgment. Isaiah's day-of-the-Lord finery-stripping inventory closes with "the hand-mirrors, and the fine linen, and the turbans, and the veils" (Isa 3:23), the daughters' face-veils named as a class to be carried away in the comprehensive humiliation, exposing the very faces the veils had covered.
Moses' Veil and the Reading of the Covenant
When Moses descends from Sinai with the skin of his face shining, he speaks the Yahweh-given words to Israel and then puts a veil on his face: "And when Moses had done speaking with them, he put a veil on his face" (Ex 34:33). The pattern repeats — the people see his face shining, "and Moses put the veil on his face again, until he went in to speak with him" (Ex 34:35) — so the veil belongs to the time outside divine speech, not inside it.
Paul lifts the same veil into a figure for the old-covenant reading. He distinguishes his apostolic openness from Moses' veil — "and [are] not as Moses, [who] put a veil on his face, that the sons of Israel should not look steadfastly on the end of that which was passing away" (2 Cor 3:13) — and then carries the image past Moses to the readers themselves: "until this very day at the reading of the old covenant the same veil stays, not being unveiled, because it is in Christ that it is removed" (2 Cor 3:14). The figure shifts from face to heart: "to this day, whenever Moses is read, a veil lies on their heart" (2 Cor 3:15). Its removal is a turning: "upon turning to the Lord, the veil is taken away" (2 Cor 3:16).
The Tabernacle Curtain
Within the wilderness sanctuary the veil is the cherubim-figured curtain that partitions the structure. The construction-directive specifies the material and craftsmanship: "make a veil of blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine twined linen: with cherubim the work of the skillful workman it will be made" (Ex 26:31). It hangs on four pillars — "you will hang it on four pillars of acacia overlaid with gold; their hooks [will be] of gold, on four sockets of silver" (Ex 26:32) — and its placement defines the inner geography: "you will hang up the veil under the clasps, and will bring in there inside the veil the ark of the testimony: and the veil will separate to you⁺ between the holy place and the most holy" (Ex 26:33). The directive's own words make the veil the boundary-cloth that creates the two compartments, with the ark on the most-holy side.
The execution-record matches the directive at every point. Bezalel makes the veil to the same colors and craftsmanship — "he made the veil of blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine twined linen: with cherubim, the work of the skillful workman, he made it" (Ex 36:35) — and supplies the same four-pillar mounting: "he made thereto four pillars of acacia, and overlaid them with gold: their hooks were of gold; And he cast for them four sockets of silver" (Ex 36:36).
The Veil of the Screen and the Ark on the March
A second usage attaches the veil to the ark itself. The offering-call lists "the ark, and its poles, the mercy-seat, and the veil of the screen" together (Ex 35:12); the completed-tabernacle inventory lists "the covering of rams' skins dyed red, and the covering of sealskins, and the veil of the screen" (Ex 39:34); and on erection-day Moses "brought the ark into the tabernacle, and set up the veil of the screen, and screened the ark of the testimony; as Yahweh commanded Moses" (Ex 40:21). When the camp moves, the same veil drops from its pillars and becomes the ark's travel-cover: "when the camp sets forward, Aaron will go in, and his sons, and they will take down the veil of the screen, and cover the ark of the testimony with it" (Num 4:5). The cherubim-curtain that defends the most-holy at rest folds into the ark's own concealment on the march.
The Temple Veil
Solomon reproduces the tabernacle pattern in stone. His temple-veil keeps the three dyes and the cherubim-figures of the wilderness curtain, with fine linen as the partition-cloth: "he made the veil of blue, and purple, and crimson, and fine linen, and wrought cherubim on it" (2 Chr 3:14). The same separating function — holy place from most-holy — carries forward into the Jerusalem sanctuary as the divider between the outer compartment and the inner house.
At the crucifixion that veil is rent. Mark records the moment in a single clause: "And the veil of the temple was rent in two from the top to the bottom" (Mark 15:38). Luke places the same rending at Jesus' last cry — "And Jesus uttered a loud voice, and breathed his last. And the veil of the temple was rent in two from the top to the bottom" (Luke 23:46) — fixing the rent-veil as a sign attached to the death itself.
Inside the Veil, Through the Veil
Hebrews lifts the tabernacle-curtain into figure twice. The naming is precise: "And after the second veil, the tabernacle which is called the Holy of holies" (Heb 9:3) — the inner-veil is "the second veil," and what lies behind it is the Holy of holies. The soul-anchor of believers reaches that inner space: it is the anchor "which we have as an anchor of the soul; both sure and steadfast; and entering into that which is inside the veil" (Heb 6:19). And the route into the same inner space is the dedicated way Christ has opened: "by the way which he dedicated for us, a new and living way, through the veil, that is to say, his flesh" (Heb 10:20). The veil-noun is identified with Christ's own flesh, and the way through it is named new and living.
The veil thus moves through Scripture in a single arc: a face-cloth in patriarchal and prophetic settings, a face-cloth on Moses giving way to a heart-cloth on the reader of Moses, a cherubim-curtain dividing the tabernacle and Solomonic temple, the same temple-curtain rent at the cross, and finally the inner-curtain of Hebrews — identified with Christ's flesh — through which the new and living way passes and inside which the soul-anchor rests.