Exodus 28:5

Summary

The verse lists the materials that "they" — the craftsmen mentioned in the preceding verses — are to take in order to make the priestly garments: gold, violet stuff, purple, scarlet stuff, and fine linen. The sentence is a simple list of five materials introduced by a single verb of taking.

Key words

• yik.Chu ("they will take", H3947H) — qal imperfect, third person masculine plural; expresses an action pending or habitual/future, governing all five objects that follow.
• za.Hav ("gold", H2091) — masculine singular noun, definite via the article ha (H9009), the first item taken.
• te.Khe.let ("violet stuff", H8504) — feminine singular noun, referring to a dyed material rather than a plain color term.
• to.La.'at ("[the] scarlet stuff of", H8438B) — feminine singular noun in construct state, meaning it must be joined to the following word sha.Ni ("scarlet", H8144) to form the full expression "scarlet-stuff of scarlet" (i.e., a dyed material qualified by its color).
• Shesh ("fine linen", H8336B) — masculine singular noun, the last item in the list, also marked definite by ha.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence begins with the independent pronoun Hem ("they", H1992) followed by the verb yik.Chu ("they will take", H3947H). The pronoun is not strictly required by the verb, which already carries the third-person plural information in its form; its presence gives emphasis to the subject, marking who specifically is to perform the action, in contrast to other agents mentioned in the surrounding context. The verb, in the qal imperfect, indicates an action projected into the future or understood as a standing instruction rather than a completed act.

Each of the five materials is introduced by the direct object marker 'et (H0853), which has no independent meaning but marks each noun as the grammatical object of yik.Chu. Four of the five nouns — za.Hav, te.Khe.let, 'ar.ga.Man, and Shesh — are simple definite nouns. The third-to-last item, however, is structured differently: to.La.'at (H8438B) appears in the construct state, meaning it is grammatically bound to the noun that follows it, sha.Ni (H8144), producing a compound expression rather than two separate items. This construct chain distinguishes the syntax of "scarlet stuff of scarlet" from the simpler listing pattern used for the other materials.

Differences between versions

The LXX (Septuagint) and Vulgate render the list of materials with equivalent terms (χρυσίον/aurum for gold, ὑάκινθον/hyacinthum for te.Khe.let, πορφύρα/purpura for 'ar.ga.Man, κόκκινον/coccus for the scarlet construct phrase, βύσσος/byssus for Shesh), but neither version reproduces the emphatic independent pronoun Hem ("they") found in the Hebrew; both simply attach the plural verb form (λήμψονται, accipient/accipientque) to the implied subject without a separate pronoun.