Exodus 28:19

Summary

Exodus 28:19 describes the third row of stones set into the high priest's breastplate, listing three gemstones: leshem ("jacinth"), shevo ("agate"), and achlamah ("amethyst"). The verse continues the enumeration of twelve stones arranged in four rows of three.

Key words

• Tur ("row", H2905) — masculine singular noun with the definite article ha (H9009), marking this as a specific, identifiable row within a known sequence (following the first and second rows described in the preceding verses).
• she.li.Shi ("third", H7992) — ordinal number, masculine singular, agreeing with Tur in gender and number; it fixes the position of this row within the four-row structure of the breastplate.
• Le.shem ("jacinth", H3958) — masculine singular noun naming the first stone of this row; no verb is present, so its placement is implied by apposition to the row.
• she.Vo ("agate", H7618) — feminine singular noun, the second stone; the shift in grammatical gender from Leshem to shevo shows that Hebrew noun gender for these stone names does not follow a fixed pattern tied to their function.
• 'ach.La.mah ("amethyst", H0306) — feminine singular noun, the third stone, joined to shevo by the conjunction ve ("and", H9002).

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence has no finite verb; it is a nominal (verbless) construction consisting of a subject phrase — ve-ha-Tur ha-shelishi ("and the row, the third") — followed by three nouns in apposition: Leshem, Shevo, and ve-Achlamah. This mirrors the syntax of the surrounding verses (28:17-20), where each row is named and then its stones are simply listed side by side without a copula ("is" or "are") or a verb of placement. The reader must supply the sense "the third row [consists of/contains]" from context, since Hebrew often omits the verb "to be" in such enumerative lists.

The definite article on ha-Tur ha-shelishi ("the row, the third") signals that this is a specific, ordinally-defined row already anticipated by the pattern established in the earlier listing of rows one and two. Only the first stone name, Shevo, carries a possessive-looking suffix in its transliterated form but functions here as a plain noun name; the coordinating conjunction ve appears twice in the verse — once introducing the entire clause about the row, and once joining the final two stone names — showing the typical Hebrew list structure of "X, Y, and Z" where only the last item receives the explicit conjunction.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew stone names Leshem, Shevo, and Achlamah are rendered in the LXX as ligyrion ("jacinth"), achatēs ("agate"), and amethystos ("amethyst"), and in the Vulgate as ligurius, achates, and amethystus. The English versions (BSB, RV1909, SBLIBRE) follow this same three-stone correspondence, translating the Hebrew terms as "jacinth," "agate," and "amethyst" (or "rubí" in RV1909 for the first stone), showing general agreement across traditions on the identification of three distinct stones in this row, though the precise botanical/mineralogical referents of the Hebrew terms are not further specified in the grammatical data itself.