Badger

Num 4:5  And when the camp setteth forward, Aaron shall come, and his sons, and they shall take down the covering vail, and cover the ark of testimony with it:
Num 4:6  And shall put thereon the covering of badgers' skins, and shall spread over it a cloth wholly of blue, and shall put in the staves thereof.

When I think of Badgers skins I see a scrappy animal with sharp claws, kind of a strange covering, so I looked up Badgers skins and found the following in Easton's Bible dictionary.

 

Our translators seem to have been misled by the similarity in sound of the Hebrew tachash_ and the Latin _taxus , "a badger." The revisers have correctly substituted "seal skins." The Arabs of the Sinaitic peninsula apply the name tucash to the seals and dugongs which are common in the Red Sea, and the skins of which are largely used as leather and for sandals. Though the badger is common in Palestine, and might occur in the wilderness, its small hide would have been useless as a tent covering. The dugong, very plentiful in the shallow waters on the shores of the Red Sea, is a marine animal from 12 to 30 feet long, something between a whale and a seal, never leaving the water, but very easily caught. It grazes on seaweed, and is known by naturalists as Halicore tabernaculi.

There is always something to learn when reading the Bible.

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