[84] He also surrounded it with the most beautiful pieces of woven work of various colours, using without stint materials of dark red and purple and scarlet and bright white, for the weaving. For he made ten curtains, as he calls them in the sacred writings, of the four kinds of material just mentioned, twenty-eight cubits in length and extended to four cubits in breadth. Thus we find in them ten, the supremely perfect number, four which contains the essence of ten, twenty-eight, a perfect number, equal to the sum of its factors, and forty, the most prolific of life, which gives the time in which, as we are told, the man is fully formed in the laboratory of nature.
[85] The twenty-eight cubits of the curtains were distributed as follows: ten along the roof, that being the breadth of the tabernacle, the rest extended along the sides, nine on each to cover the pillars, but leaving one cubit free from the floor, that this work so magnificent and worthily held sacred should not trail in the dust.
[86] Of the forty cubits which sum up the breadth of the ten curtains, thirty are taken up by the length of the tabernacle itself, that being its extent, nine by the backyard, and the remaining one by the space at the propylaeum, thus forming a bond to make the enclosing complete. On the propylaeum was set the veil.
[87] But in a sense the curtains also are veils, not only because they cover the roof and the walls, but also because they are woven with the same kinds of material, dark red and purple and scarlet and bright white. And what he calls the “covering” was also made with the same materials as the veil, that being placed inside along the four pillars to hide the inmost sanctuary, the “covering” outside along the five pillars, so that no unconsecrated person should get even a distant view of the holy precincts.