Deuteronomy 26:4

Summary

The verse describes an action performed by the priest: he takes a basket from the hand of the offerer and places it before the altar of Yehovah. It is a procedural instruction within a ritual sequence, marked by two consecutive verbs.

Key words

• la.Kach ("he will take", H3947) — qal sequential perfect, continuing the narrative chain; indicates the priest's first action.
• ha.Ten ("basket", H2935) — masculine singular noun with definite article, the object being transferred.
• mi.ya.De.kha ("from your hand", H3027 + H9021) — construct noun with pronominal suffix, marking the source of the transfer, from the offerer to the priest.
• hi.ni.Cho ("he will set it down", H5117 + H9033) — hiphil (causative) sequential perfect with object suffix "it," the priest's second action, causing the basket to rest.
• miz.Bach ("altar of", H4196) — construct noun linking to Yehovah 'Elohekha, specifying the location where the basket is placed.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built on two sequential perfect verbs joined by the narrative ve ("and", H9001): ve.la.Kach ("and he will take") and ve.hi.ni.Ach ("and he will set down"). This verb chain shows a clear temporal sequence — first the taking, then the placing — typical of Biblical Hebrew narrative or instructional syntax where each step follows the previous one without needing separate subordinating conjunctions.

The subject of both verbs is ha.ko.Hen ("the priest", H3548), explicitly stated only once, before the first verb, and implicitly carried through the second. The object of the first verb, ha.Tene ("the basket", H2935), is marked as coming mi.ya.De.kha ("from your hand", H3027+H9021), a construct phrase with a second-person masculine singular suffix identifying whose hand it leaves. The second verb, hi.ni.Ach ("he will set down", H5117), is hiphil, a causative stem indicating the priest is the one causing the basket to be placed at rest; its own pronominal suffix -o ("it", H9033) refers back to the basket without repeating the noun.

The destination is expressed through a chain of construct nouns: li.f.nei ("before", H6440) leads into miz.Bach ("altar of", H4196), which is itself construct with Yehovah 'Elohekha ("Yehovah your God", H3068+H0430), so the phrase reads as a single unit: "before the altar of Yehovah your God."

Differences between versions

The LXX renders ha.Tene ("basket") with kartallon, a specific term for a container, while the Vulgate uses cartallum, a transliteration-based loanword reflecting the same Greek term rather than a native Latin word for basket.