Veil
The veil moves through scripture along two parallel tracks. As a piece of clothing it covers a face — a bride's, a widow's, a prophet's; as a piece of sanctuary furniture it covers an inner room — the place where the ark sits and the cloud appears. The two tracks are kept separate in the law and in the early narratives, but in the prophets and especially in the New Testament they begin to intersect: the same word that names the cloth Moses wraps around his shining face also names the curtain that hides the mercy-seat, and both end up being torn, lifted, or removed.
A Covering for the Face
The earliest uses of the veil belong to the world of marriage, mourning, and modesty. Rebekah, riding to meet Isaac, "took her veil, and covered herself" (Gen 24:65). Tamar, removing the garments of her widowhood, "covered herself with her veil, and wrapped herself, and sat in the gate of Enaim" (Gen 38:14); afterward she "put off her veil from her, and put on the garments of her widowhood" again (Gen 38:19). The veil functions in both scenes as a public marker: it changes what kind of woman bystanders see.
Isaiah, listing the finery of Jerusalem's daughters along with "the hand-mirrors, and the fine linen, and the turbans, and the veils" (Is 3:23), treats the veil as ordinary feminine attire. Ruth, by contrast, holds out her mantle to Boaz on the threshing-floor (Ru 3:15) — gathered with the VEIL passages because the underlying garment vocabulary belongs to the same family of head-and-shoulders coverings.
The practice carries forward into the New Testament congregation. Paul writes that "every woman praying or prophesying with her head unveiled dishonors her head; for it is one and the same thing as if she were shaven. For if a woman is not veiled, let her also be shorn: but if it is a shame to a woman to be shorn or shaven, let her be veiled" (1 Cor 11:5-6).
Moses' Veil and the Glory
The veil of Moses is the hinge between the personal-covering uses and the sanctuary-curtain uses. After speaking with Yahweh, Moses' face shines, and the people cannot bear it: "And when Moses had done speaking with them, he put a veil on his face" (Ex 34:33). The pattern then repeats: "But when Moses went in before Yahweh to speak with him, he took the veil off, until he came out; and he came out, and spoke to the sons of Israel that which he was commanded. And the sons of Israel saw the face of Moses, that the skin of Moses' face shone: and Moses put the veil on his face again, until he went in to speak with him" (Ex 34:34-35). The veil here is not modesty but mercy — it shields the people from a residual glory they cannot yet endure.
Paul reads this scene typologically. Moses, he writes, "put a veil on his face, that the sons of Israel should not look steadfastly on the end of that which was passing away: but their minds were hardened. For 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. But to this day, whenever Moses is read, a veil lies on their heart. But upon turning to the Lord, the veil is taken away" (2 Cor 3:13-16). The same image lands again a few verses later: "But all of us, with unveiled face looking as in a mirror at the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord the Spirit" (2 Cor 3:18). And once more, with the metaphor inverted toward unbelief: "And even if our good news is veiled, it is veiled in those who perish" (2 Cor 4:3).
The Curtain of the Sanctuary
The second use of the word names the inner curtain of the tabernacle. Yahweh commands Moses, "And you will 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). The function is then specified: "And 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). When the work is done, the construction-narrative repeats the command verbatim: "And 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). Solomon's temple keeps the same specification: "And he made the veil of blue, and purple, and crimson, and fine linen, and wrought cherubim on it" (2 Chr 3:14).
The curtain is the boundary of life-and-death access. Yahweh tells Aaron through Moses, "that he does not come at all times into the holy place inside the veil, before the mercy-seat which is on the ark; that he does not die: for [my Speech] will appear in the cloud on the mercy-seat" (Lev 16:2). Once a year, on the Day of Atonement, the high priest crosses it: "and he will take a censer full of coals of fire from off the altar before Yahweh, and his hands full of sweet incense beaten small, and bring it inside the veil" (Lev 16:12); "Then he will kill the goat of the sin-offering, that is for the people, and bring his blood inside the veil, and do with his blood as he did with the blood of the bull, and sprinkle it on the mercy-seat, and before the mercy-seat" (Lev 16:15).
The second-temple curtain has its own short history. Antiochus, "proudly entered into the sanctuary, and took away the golden altar, and the lampstand of light, and all the vessels of it, and the table of proposition, and the pouring vessels, and the vials, and the little mortars of gold, and the veil, and the crowns, and the golden ornament that was before the temple: and he broke them all in pieces" (1 Macc 1:22). At the rededication the Maccabean restorers "set the loaves on the table, and hung up the veils, and finished all the works that they had begun to make" (1 Macc 4:51).
The Veil Torn
At the crucifixion the curtain that had separated the holy place from the most holy is destroyed from the divine side. Mark records simply: "And the veil of the temple was rent in two from the top to the bottom" (Mark 15:38). Luke records the same event at the moment Jesus dies (Luke 23:46).
Hebrews reads this tearing as the opening of a way. The hope of believers reaches "as an anchor of the soul; both sure and steadfast; and entering into that which is inside the veil" (Heb 6:19). The author identifies the inner curtain explicitly — "And after the second veil, the tabernacle which is called the Holy of holies" (Heb 9:3) — and then describes the new access in terms that fuse the curtain with the body of Christ: "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 Lifted from the Nations
Isaiah's vision of the eschaton names a third veil — a covering over the peoples that Yahweh promises to remove. "And he will destroy in this mountain the face of the covering that covers all peoples, and the veil that is spread over all nations" (Is 25:7). This is the universal counterpart of the personal "unveiled face" of 2 Cor 3:18 and the cosmic counterpart of the rent temple curtain — a single trajectory in which the veil over the face, the veil before the ark, and the veil over the nations are all, finally, taken away.