Exodus 34:19

Summary

The verse states that every firstborn that "opens the womb" belongs to the speaker (יהוה, contextually), and extends this claim specifically to the firstborn males of livestock — cattle and sheep. The sentence has two parallel clauses, each built on the construct noun peter ("firstborn/opener of", H6363A).

Key words

• Peter ("firstborn of", H6363A) — construct singular, appears twice, meaning "the one who opens/breaches." It governs the following noun (rechem, then shor) to specify what is being opened.
• Rechem ("a womb", H7358) — absolute singular, the object opened by the firstborn; together peter rechem is a fixed idiom for "firstborn offspring."
• tizzakhar ("it will be remembered", H2142) — Niphal imperfect, third person feminine, agreeing with miknecha ("your livestock"). The Niphal stem marks a passive or reflexive nuance: the livestock "is to be marked/remembered" rather than performing an action itself.
• mikneka ("your livestock", H4735 + H9021) — construct noun with second-person masculine singular suffix, addressing an individual owner directly.
• shor ("an ox", H7794) and seh ("a sheep", H7716) — both absolute singular nouns, listed as the categories of livestock to which the rule of peter applies.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence divides into two balanced clauses joined by ve- ("and"). The first, kol-peter rechem li, has no verb — it is a nominal clause stating a state of belonging: "every peter of rechem [belongs] to me," with the preposition li ("to me," built from le- + first-person suffix) carrying the predicate force. The second clause, ve-khol mikneka tizzakhar, does contain a verb, tizzakhar, in the Niphal imperfect. This form derives from the same root (Z-K-R) that also produces the word for "male" (zakhar) elsewhere in Biblical Hebrew, though here it is inflected as a finite verb meaning "it will be remembered/marked," with khol miknekha ("all your livestock") as its grammatical subject.

The final phrase, peter shor va-seh, restates the opening term peter in construct form, now governing shor ("ox") and seh ("sheep") joined by va- ("and"), specifying the livestock in question. The construct chain peter rechem recurs verbally at both ends of the verse, framing the general principle (every firstborn) and its particular application (firstborn of ox and sheep).

Differences between versions

The Hebrew verb tizzakhar (H2142, "it will be remembered/marked") is rendered differently in the ancient versions. The LXX inserts τὰ ἀρσενικά ("the males"), and the Vulgate reads generis masculini ("of male sex"), both making explicit a reference to "male" that in the Hebrew is only carried by the verbal root's phonetic overlap with zakhar ("male"), not by an explicit noun. The Hebrew itself uses a passive/reflexive verb form ("will be remembered") rather than a direct adjective "male," which the LXX and Vulgate supply.