Exodus 23:19

Summary

The verse commands bringing the "beginning of the firstfruits" of one's land to the house of Yehovah, followed by a distinct prohibition against boiling a young goat in its mother's milk. These are two separate legal statements joined without an explicit connector in the Hebrew.

Key words

re.Shit ("beginning of", H7225) — feminine singular construct noun; grammatically bound to the following word, indicating that what follows (bikkurei) belongs to or specifies this "beginning."

bi.ku.Rei ("firstfruits of", H1061) — masculine plural construct; stacks onto re.Shit to form a double construct chain ("beginning-of firstfruits-of"), intensifying the sense of earliest yield before it is bound to "your ground."

ta.Vi' ("you will bring", H0935) — Hiphil imperfect, second person masculine singular. The Hiphil stem is causative, so the verb frames the subject as the one who causes the produce to arrive at the sanctuary, rather than simply "going" there.

te.va.Shel ("you must boil", H1310) — Piel imperfect, second person masculine singular. The Piel stem carries an intensive/factitive nuance, marking the action as a deliberate process of cooking, not a passive or accidental state.

ge.Di ("a kid", H1423) — masculine singular noun, unmarked by any construct or suffix, standing as the direct object of the prohibition.

What the text says

The verse opens with a double construct chain: re.Shit ("beginning of") governs bi.ku.Rei ("firstfruits of"), which in turn governs 'ad.Ma.te-kha ("your ground"). This three-layer construct produces a single compact noun phrase functioning as the object of ta.Vi' ("you will bring"). The Hiphil form of ta.Vi' casts the addressee as the causative agent who brings the produce specifically beit Yehovah 'elohei-kha ("house of Yehovah your God"), itself another construct chain.

The second clause is introduced by the negation lo' ("not") attached to te.va.Shel ("you must boil"), a Piel imperfect verb. The object is ge.Di ("a kid"), unmodified, followed by the prepositional phrase ba-chalev 'immo ("in the milk of its mother"), where chalev ("milk of") is itself a construct noun bound to 'immo ("its mother," with the third-person masculine suffix). The grammar thus builds a tight chain: the animal must not be cooked using the specific milk-source belonging to its own mother, a relationship marked entirely through construct and suffix morphology rather than separate possessive words.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew ge.Di (H1423) denotes "a kid" (young goat). The LXX renders this as ἄρνα ("lamb"), differing from the Hebrew term for a goat. The Vulgate's hædum ("young goat") aligns with the Hebrew ge.Di. The Spanish translations (RV1909, SBLIBRE) follow the Hebrew/Vulgate tradition with "cabrito" (kid/young goat).