As one reads in Exodus 35:7 and other places that one of the coverings for the tabernacle is porpoise skins, it raises some eyebrows and maybe creates some doubts about the reliability of the Bible. Where would they get porpoise skins?
There are several animals and plants mentioned in the Old Testament that cause translators trouble to know exactly what an English equivalent might be. Usually, when that happens, various translations of the Bible will have several different English words, with each trying to convey the correct meaning.
The Hebrew word translated “porpoise” in the New American Standard Bible is translated by the following words in other translations: (1) King James and New King James Versions—badger, (2) American Standard Version—seal, (3) New International Version—sea cows, (4) English Standard Version—goat. Anytime an original word is translated by many different English word, one can know that it is a difficult word to translate accurately in the English.
The Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (R. Laird Harris, Gleason L. Archer, Jr., Bruce K. Waltke #2503) gives some helpful information on this subject. “Since the badger is rarely if ever seen in Sinai, and since Arabic tuhas ‘dolphin,’ seems to be cognate to Hebrew tahash, most recent commentators translate the Hebrew word as ‘dolphin, porpoise, dugong’ or the like (RSV “goat,” through not impossible, lacks cognate language support, as does KJV “badger”). The bottle-nose dolphin (Tursiops truncates) is found in the eastern Mediterranean, while the dugong (Dugong dugong) is plentiful in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aqaba; the skin of the latter is still used by Bedouin to make sandals. If (as seems likely) the tahash was the outermost protective covering of the tabernacle, the skin of a marine animal like the dolphin or dugong would have been eminently suitable, both for its toughness and for its waterproofing properties.”
The dictionary defines “dugong” as “an aquatic mammal found on the coasts of the Indian Ocean from eastern Africa to northern Australia.” Maybe this little bit of information will help us understand the strange thought we might wonder about when “porpoise” is mentioned as they built the tabernacle in the middle of a wilderness.
