prop. some form of the verb סָתִר, sathar’, to hide: namely סֵתֶר, se’ther, a shelter ([1Sa 25:20]; [Job 40:21]; [Psa 61:4]; [Isa 16:4]; [Isa 20:2]; elsewhere usually “secret place”); מַסְתּוֹר, mistor’, protection ([Isa 4:6]); elsewhere some form of the verb סָכִךְ, sakak’, to weave: namely, מוּסָךְ, musak’ (text מֵיסָךְ, meysak’), a covered walk or portico (Sept. θεμέλιον, apparently reading מוּסָד, Vulg. musarch’); סֹךְ, sok, a lair ([Jer 25:8]; “den,” [Psa 10:9]; elsewhere a hut, “pavilion,” [Psa 27:5]; “tabernacle,” Psalm 867:2); סֻכָּה, sukkah’ ([Job 38:40]), a booth (as elsewhere usually rendered). This term is generally applied to a thicket for wild beasts, but in [2Ki 16:18], we read that Ahaz, when spoiling the Temple, “took down the covert (מוּסָךְ, musak’) for the Sabbath that they had built in the house;” which bishop Patrick imagines was ‘a covered place, where the king sat, in the porch of the Temple, or at the entrance of it, upon the Sabbath, or other great solemnities. Ahaz took this away, intending, probably, not to trouble himself with coming to the Temple any more, but to sacrifice elsewhere.” SEE COURT. It rather designates a cloister, shaded from the heat of the sun for the accommodation of the courtly worshippers (Thenius, in loc.), such as we know ran around the interior of the Temple in later times. SEE TEMPLE.
