Exodus 30:14

Summary

The verse specifies who is obligated to pay a particular contribution: everyone counted among the enrolled who is twenty years old or above must give this payment to Yehovah. The Hebrew frames this through a participle describing the act of "passing over" into a specific census group.

Key words

• kol ("every", H3605) — construct-state noun opening the clause, meaning "every/all of," grammatically requiring a following noun to complete its sense ("every [one] of...").
• ha'over ("[one who] passes over", H5674A) — qal participle, masculine singular, describing an ongoing or characteristic action rather than a completed one; functions as a substantive ("the one passing over" = "whoever passes over").
• pequdim ("[who] are enrolled", H6485A) — qal passive participle, masculine plural, denoting those who have been counted or mustered; the passive form indicates they are the recipients of the counting action, not the agents.
• yitten ("he will pay", H5414G) — qal imperfect, third person masculine singular, expressing a future or habitual obligation ("he shall give/pay").
• terumat YHWH ("contribution of Yehovah", H8641 + H3068G) — construct chain: terumah ("contribution/offering") governed by the divine name, marking the payment as belonging to or directed toward Yehovah.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence begins with kol ha'over ("every one who passes over"), a construct + participle pairing that identifies the subject not by a fixed noun but by an action in progress — literally "everyone doing the passing-over." This subject is further defined by the prepositional phrase 'al-ha-pequdim ("to/over those enrolled"), where pequdim is itself a passive participle: the enrolled are people who have been (or are being) counted, without specifying by whom. The age qualifier mi-ben 'esrim shanah va-ma'lah ("from a son of twenty years and upward") uses the idiomatic construct ben + number + shanah to express age, a common Biblical Hebrew formula.

The main verb yitten is singular, agreeing with the singular collective subject kol ha'over, and expresses the obligation as a future/modal action ("shall give"). The object is terumat YHWH, a construct phrase where terumah denotes a lifted or set-apart contribution, here explicitly tied to Yehovah by the following divine name in the construct chain.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the Hebrew participles ha'over and pequdim with a single phrase, ho paraporeuomenos eis tēn episkepsin ("the one passing into the visitation/numbering"), collapsing two Hebrew participial ideas into one Greek construction with a noun (episkepsis) for "enrollment" rather than a matching participle. The LXX verb dōsousin ("they shall give") is plural, differing from the Hebrew singular yitten ("he shall give"). The Vulgate's "Qui habetur in numero" ("who is held in the number") shifts the Hebrew's active participle ha'over ("the one passing over") into a passive construction focused on being counted, and its "dabit pretium" ("shall give the price") uses pretium ("price") where the Hebrew has terumat YHWH ("contribution of Yehovah"), omitting the divine name found in the Hebrew construct phrase.