Exodus 16:23

Summary

Moses (the subject continues from the preceding verses) tells the people that what Yehovah had previously announced is now in effect: the next day is a shabbaton ("sabbath observance", H7677) and a shabbat qodesh ("sabbath of holiness", H7676/H6944), a holy rest for Yehovah. He instructs them to bake and boil what needs preparing today, and to set aside the surplus for the following morning.

Key words

• shabbaton ("a sabbath observance", H7677) — an abstract noun marking the day's character as one of rest, paired immediately with the following construct phrase.
• shabbat-qodesh ("a sabbath of holiness", H7676 construct + H6944) — a construct chain literally "sabbath of holiness," intensifying the previous shabbaton by naming the specific quality of the rest.
• to'fu ("you will bake", H0644, qal imperfect) followed immediately by 'efu ("bake", H0644, qal imperative) — the same root repeated first as a future/habitual form, then as a direct command, reinforcing the instruction.
• tevashelu ("you will boil", H1310, piel imperfect) followed by bashelu ("boil", H1310, piel imperative) — the same doubling pattern as with H0644, using the piel (intensive) stem for cooking by boiling.
• ha-'odef ("the surplus", H5736, qal participle with article) — a participial noun, "the one that is exceeding/remaining," designating the leftover food as an ongoing state rather than a simple noun.

What the text says

The verse opens with va-yo'mer ("and he said", H0559) introducing direct speech, followed by the emphatic construction hu' 'asher dibber Yehovah — literally "it is that which Yehovah spoke" — which uses the independent pronoun hu' (H1931) to stress that what follows is precisely the content of the earlier divine word, not a new instruction. The core announcement stacks two nouns, shabbaton and shabbat-qodesh, without a conjunction between them, a construction that in Hebrew narrative style piles up terms describing the same reality (the rest-day) rather than listing two separate rests.

The instructions for food preparation use a distinctive doubling: each verb appears first in the imperfect (to'fu, tevashelu), describing what the people would be baking/boiling, and then immediately in the imperative ('efu, bashelu), the direct command to do it. This repetition of the same root in two grammatical forms is a feature of the Hebrew that most translations flatten into a single command ("bake what you want to bake"), since English/Spanish do not typically double a verb this way for emphasis. The final clause uses the participle ha-'odef ("the surplus," H5736) as a substantive, referring to the leftover as an ongoing condition ("that which is left over") rather than a fixed quantity, before the imperative hanichu ("leave/set aside", H5117, hiphil) directs its disposal le-mishmeret ("for a keeping", H4931) until ha-boqer ("the morning", H1242).

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the opening statement as a question — Ou touto estin to rhēma ho elalēsen kyrios ("Is this not the word that the Lord spoke?") — where the Hebrew hu' 'asher dibber Yehovah is a declarative affirmation, not a question. The Vulgate follows the Hebrew's declarative sense (Hoc est quod locutus est Dominus). Both the LXX (σάββατα ἀνάπαυσις ἁγία) and Vulgate (Requies sabbati sanctificata) render the two-noun Hebrew construction (shabbaton / shabbat-qodesh) as a single descriptive phrase rather than preserving the doubled Hebrew nouns.