Exodus 12:7

Summary

Exodus 12:7 instructs that some of the blood (from the animal mentioned in preceding verses) is to be taken and applied to the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which it will be eaten. The verse consists of two sequential actions — taking and placing — followed by a relative clause identifying the houses by the act of eating that will occur inside them.

Key words

• la.ke.Chu ("they will take", H3947G) — qal sequential perfect, third person plural; continues the narrative sequence begun by prior instructions, indicating a required future action.
• na.te.Nu ("they will put [it]", H5414H) — qal sequential perfect, parallel in form to la.ke.Chu; the two sequential perfects link "taking" and "placing" as one continuous procedure.
• me.zu.Zot ("doorposts", H4201) — feminine plural noun, paired with she.Tei ("[the] two", H8147), a feminine dual construct number specifying exactly two doorposts as the location for the blood.
• mash.Kof ("lintels", H4947) — masculine singular noun naming the horizontal beam above the door, distinct from the vertical doorposts.
• yo.khe.Lu ("they will eat", H0398) — qal imperfect, third person masculine plural; unlike the preceding perfects, this verb marks ongoing/future action and appears inside the relative clause introduced by 'a.Sher ("which", H0834A), defining which houses receive the blood — those where the eating will occur.

What the text says

The verse is built on two parallel qal sequential perfect verbs, la.ke.Chu ("they will take") and na.te.Nu ("they will put"), both third person plural, which present the actions of taking blood and applying it as a continuous sequence following earlier commands in the chapter. The direct object of the first verb is marked by the preposition min ("some of", H4480A) attached to ha.Dam ("the blood", H1818), indicating a partitive sense — not all the blood, but a portion of it.

The location of the application is specified in layered detail: 'al ("on", H5921A) governs first she.Tei ha.me.zu.Zot ("the two doorposts"), using the dual-marked construct number she.Tei to fix the quantity at exactly two, then a second 'al clause adds ha.mash.Kof ("the lintels"), and a third 'al clause adds ha.Ba.tim ("the houses"). This repetition of the preposition 'al across three phrases builds a spatial description moving from the specific parts of the doorway to the house as a whole.

The final clause, introduced by the relative particle 'a.Sher ("which", H0834A), shifts verb aspect from the perfect forms used for the ritual actions to the imperfect yo.khe.Lu ("they will eat"), describing an action that is future/ongoing relative to the placing of blood. The object of eating, 'oto ("it", H0853 + suffix), and the locative phrase ba.Hem ("in them", H9038) close the verse by anchoring the eating explicitly to "the houses" just named.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders she.Tei ha.me.zu.Zot ("the two doorposts") as "τῶν δύο σταθμῶν" and ha.mash.Kof ("the lintels") as "τὴν φλιὰν" (singular), while the Hebrew uses a plural for mash.Kof's referent context ("houses," plural, later in the verse) but a singular noun form for "lintel." The Vulgate's "utrumque postem" ("each/both post") reflects the dual sense of she.Tei similarly to the Hebrew, and "in superliminaribus domorum" pluralizes the lintel-and-houses phrase together, differing slightly from the LXX's singular "φλιὰν."