Exodus 30:34

Summary

Yehovah instructs Moses to take four aromatic substances — nataf ("stacte"), shecheleth ("onycha"), chelbenah ("galbanum"), and levonah ("frankincense") described as zakkah ("pure") — and specifies that they are to be in equal proportions, using the idiom bad be-vad ("part in part").

Key words

• qach ("take", H3947G) — qal imperative, 2nd person masculine singular; a direct command addressed to Moses.
• samim ("spices", H5561) — masculine plural noun, appearing twice (positions 9 and 15), framing the list of four named substances as a category.
• zakkah ("pure", H2134) — feminine singular adjective modifying levonah ("frankincense", H3828), the only ingredient in the list explicitly qualified.
• bad ("a part", H0905I) — masculine singular noun, repeated (bad be-vad, "part in/with part") to form an idiomatic expression of proportional equality.
• yihyeh ("it will be", H1961) — qal imperfect, 3rd person masculine singular, giving the clause a durative or prescriptive force ("it shall be" / "it is to be").

What the text says

The verse opens with the narrative formula va-yomer Yehovah el-Mosheh ("and Yehovah said to Moses"), a standard introduction to divine speech in the book. The core instruction is the imperative qach-lekha ("take for yourself"), followed by a list of four items: nataf, shecheleth, chelbenah, and levonah zakkah. The noun samim ("spices") brackets this list, appearing once before nataf and once before levonah, which some grammatical analyses read as marking two internal pairs within the four-item list rather than a simple sequence.

The closing clause, bad be-vad yihyeh, is a proportional idiom built from the repetition of bad ("a part") with the preposition be- ("in/with") between the two occurrences. This construction — "part in part" — expresses that each ingredient is to be present in the same quantity relative to the others, without specifying an absolute unit of measure. The verb yihyeh ("it will be"), in the imperfect, gives this proportional rule an ongoing or standing quality rather than describing a single completed act.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders chelbenah ("galbanum", H2464) as χαλβάνην ἡδυσμοῦ ("galbanum of sweet spice"), adding a qualifier not present as a separate word in the Hebrew for this item. The Vulgate similarly expands chelbenah into "galbanum boni odoris" ("galbanum of good odor") and renders levonah zakkah as "thus lucidissimum" ("most clear/bright frankincense"), intensifying the Hebrew zakkah ("pure"). For the bad be-vad idiom, the LXX gives ἴσον ἴσῳ ("equal to equal") and the Vulgate "aequalis ponderis" ("of equal weight"), both making explicit an idea of measured equality that the Hebrew expresses through the repeated noun bad without stating "weight" directly.