Exodus 28:27

Summary

Exodus 28:27 instructs the addition of two more gold rings to the ephod, specifying their exact placement: on the two shoulder-pieces, on the lower front side, near the seam, just above the woven waistband of the ephod.

Key words

• 'a.si.Ta ("you will make", H6213H) — qal sequential perfect, continuing the chain of instructions given to the addressee (Moses) in the second person masculine singular.
• ta.be.'ot ("rings of", H2885) — feminine plural construct, grammatically bound to zahav ("gold", H2091) that follows, forming "rings of gold."
• khit.Fot ("shoulder-pieces of", H3802) — feminine plural construct, bound to ha-'efod ("the ephod", H0646), locating the rings specifically at the shoulder straps rather than elsewhere on the garment.
• mul paNay ("in front of ... face", H4136 + H6440G) — construct chain with a pronominal suffix ("its face"), indicating the front-facing side of the shoulder-piece, as opposed to the back.
• 'u.Mat mechbarTo ("close to its joining", H5980 + H4225) — construct noun with suffix, pinpointing the seam or juncture point as the reference for the rings' vertical position.

What the text says

The verse is built as a chain of two sequential perfect verbs — 'a.si.Ta ("you will make") and na.ta.Tah ("you will put") — both continuing prior instructions with the narrative vav (H9001), a common construction in legal/procedural Hebrew for listing successive actions. The object of the second verb, 'otam ("them", H0853 + suffix), refers back to the rings just mentioned.

The placement is described through a stack of construct chains and prepositions rather than a single spatial term: 'al ("on", H5921A) sets the general location (the two shoulder-pieces), then mi-lemattah ("from beneath/downwards", H9006+H9005+H4295) narrows it to the lower part, mi-mul panav ("from in front of its face", H4136+H6440G) specifies the front side, le-'umat mechbarto ("close to its joining", H5980+H4225) anchors it near a seam, and mi-ma'al le-chesheb ha-'efod ("from above the girdle of the ephod", H4605+H2805) gives the final vertical reference point, the woven waistband. This layering of prepositional and construct phrases produces a precise three-dimensional description that a single translated phrase like "near its seam" or "above the waistband" can only partially convey; the Hebrew stacks four separate spatial anchors (side, height, face, seam) rather than one.

Differences between versions

The LXX text supplied here (Καὶ ποιήσεις ὑποδύτην ποδήρη ὅλον ὑακίνθινον, "you will make a full-length tunic, entirely hyacinth-colored") describes a different garment altogether and does not correspond to the Hebrew content of this verse about gold rings on the ephod's shoulder-pieces. The Vulgate and later translations (RV1909, BSB, SBLIBRE) follow the Hebrew's content on rings and placement, though they render the stacked construct phrases as a single descriptive clause rather than preserving the Hebrew's sequential prepositional layering.