John Gill Bible Commentary

And thou shall make forty sockets of silver under the twenty boards,.... Or bases (s), and which were properly the foundation of the tabernacle, on which it was settled and established; these sockets were the mortises for the two tenons of each board or plank to be placed in, and were as broad as the plank, and, joining each other, made one entire basis for the whole structure; each socket contained a talent of silver, and was made of the silver given at the numbering of the people, Exo 38:25, and a talent of silver, according to Bishop Cumberland, amounted to three hundred and fifty three pounds, eleven shillings and some odd pence of our money: by which may be judged the whole value of this silver foundation, which, with the four sockets of the vail, consisted of one hundred of them, which answer to the one hundred talents of silver collected at the above offering: two sockets under one board for his two tenons, and two sockets under another board for his two tenons; and so in all the twenty boards, which took up the whole forty on the south side. (s) "bases", V. L. Pagninus, Montanus, Tigurine version, Piscator, Drusius.