Deuteronomy 16:13

Summary

The verse instructs that the festival of sukkot ("booths", H5521) is to be observed for seven days, timed to the moment of gathering the produce from the threshing floor and the wine-press. The clause structure ties the celebration directly to the agricultural act of ingathering rather than to a fixed calendar reference alone.

Key words

• chag ("festival of", H2282) — masculine singular construct noun, opening the sentence as the object being commanded; construct form links it directly to ha-Sukkot.
• ta'aSeh ("you will observe", H6213A) — qal imperfect, second person masculine singular; the imperfect aspect conveys an action to be carried out, here functioning as an instruction rather than a simple future report.
• 'Asepekha ("gathering", from 'Asaf, H0622 + suffix) — qal infinitive with pronominal suffix "you", governed by the preposition be ("when", H9003); this infinitive construct with be creates a temporal clause, "when you gather," anchoring the festival's timing to the harvest action itself.
• garnekha ("your threshing floor", H1637) — feminine singular construct with second-person suffix, naming the location of grain processing.
• yikvekha ("your wine-press", H3342) — masculine singular construct with second-person suffix, paired with garnekha via the conjunction u ("and", H9002) to name the second harvest site.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence opens with the object of the command, chag ha-Sukkot ("the festival of booths"), placed before the verb ta'aSeh ("you will observe"). This word order foregrounds what is being commanded before stating who performs it, a common feature of Hebrew instructional syntax. The verb ta'aSeh is a qal imperfect, second-person masculine singular, which in this legal-style context expresses an obligation to perform an action, not merely a prediction.

The phrase shiv'at yamim ("seven days", H7651 + H3117G) specifies duration using a construct chain — "seven of days" — attached directly after the verb and its reflexive-marking preposition lekha ("for yourself"). The temporal clause that follows, be-'Asepekha ("when your gathering," H9003 + infinitive H0622 + suffix), uses an infinitive construct governed by the preposition be, a standard Hebrew construction for expressing "when you do X." This infinitive carries its own pronominal suffix functioning as the subject of the gathering action, a feature not directly translatable into English without adding a full subordinate clause.

The two source locations, mi-garnekha ("from your threshing floor") and mi-yikvekha ("from your winepress"), are each construct nouns with possessive suffixes, joined by the conjunction u ("and"), and both governed by the preposition min ("from," H9006), marking the origin points of what is gathered.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders chag ha-Sukkot as "Ἑορτὴν σκηνῶν" ("festival of tents/tabernacles"), using σκηνῶν rather than a term specific to "booths," while the Vulgate uses "tabernaculorum" ("of tabernacles"), similarly generalizing the structure named in the Hebrew sukkot. Both LXX and Vulgate preserve the temporal link to gathering (Greek "ἐν τῷ συναγαγεῖν," Latin "quando collegeris") consistent with the Hebrew infinitive clause.