The hooks. The word שְׁפַתַּיִם occurs again only in Psalms 68:13, where it signifies "sheepfolds," or "stalls;" its older form ( מִשְׁפְתַיִם) appearing in Genesis 49:14 and 5:16. As this sense is unsuitable, recourse must be had to its derivation (from שָׁפַת, "to put, set, or fix"), which suggests as its import here either, as Ewald, Kliefoth, Hengstenberg, Havernick, and Smend, following the LXX.
and Vulgate, prefer, "ledges," or "border guards," on the edge of the tables, to keep the instruments or flesh from falling off; or, as Kimchi, Gesenius, Furst, Keil, Schroder, and Plumptre, after the Chaldean paraphrast, explain, "pegs" fastened in the wall for hanging the slaughtered caresses before they were flayed.
In favor of the first meaning stand the facts that the second clause of this verse speaks of" tables," not of "walls," and that the measure of the shephataim is one of breadth rather than of length; against it are the considerations that the dual form, shephataim, fits better to a forked peg than to a double border, and that the shephataim are stated to have been fastened "in the house" (ba-baith), which again suits the idea of a peg fastened in the outer wall of the porch, rather than of a border fixed upon a table.
The last clause of this verse is rendered by Ewald, after the LXX; "and over the tables" (obviously those standing outside of the porch) "were covers to protect them from rain and from drought;" and it is conceivable that coverings might have been advantageous for both the wooden tables and the officiating priests; only the Hebrew must be changed before it can yield this rendering.