Exodus 34:20

Summary

Exodus 34:20 gives instructions concerning firstborn animals and sons: the firstborn of a donkey must be redeemed with a sheep, or else its neck is to be broken. The firstborn of one's sons must also be redeemed, and no one is to appear before the speaker "empty."

Key words

• Feter ("firstborn of", H6363A) — construct noun opening the clause, grammatically bound to chamor ("donkey", H2543) that follows.
• tifDeh ("you will redeem", H6299) — qal imperfect, second-person masculine singular; appears three times in the verse (lines 4, 10, 18), each time addressing the same "you" with an ongoing/future obligation.
• 'araft ("you will break neck", H6202) — qal sequential perfect, continuing the action-chain begun by the imperfects; the sequential form links it logically as the consequence of the preceding conditional im lo ("if not", H0518A/H3808).
• yera'u ("people will present themselves", H7200G) — niphal (passive/reflexive) imperfect, third-person masculine plural, shifting the grammatical subject away from "you" to an unspecified plural subject.
• reiqam ("empty", H7387) — adverb modifying the manner of the verb yera'u, describing the condition under which appearance is prohibited.

What the text says

The verse is built on two parallel conditional/obligatory structures using the same verb tifDeh ("you will redeem", H6299) in qal imperfect. The first governs peter chamor ("firstborn of a donkey", H6363A + H2543): it is to be redeemed be-seh ("with a sheep", H7716), introduced by the preposition ve ("with", H9003). A conditional clause follows — ve-im lo tifDeh ("and if you do not redeem", H9002+H0518A+H3808+H6299) — leading into va-'araftO ("and you will break its neck", H6202+H9033), where the narrative/sequential vav chains this action as the direct consequence of non-redemption. The pronominal suffix -o ("its", H9033) refers back to the donkey.

The second structure repeats tifDeh for kol beKhor baneiKha ("all the firstborn of your sons", H3605+H1060+H1121A+H9021), using the same construct chain pattern (kol + beKhor + baneiKha) but without specifying a redemption substitute or an alternative consequence, unlike the donkey clause.

The final clause changes grammatical voice: ve-lo yera'u fanai reiqam ("and my face will not be seen empty", H9002+H3808+H7200G+H6440G+H9020+H7387) uses a niphal (passive/reflexive) third-person plural verb, shifting from the second-person "you" of the redemption commands to an unspecified plural subject. fanai ("my face", H6440G+H9020) is a construct noun with a first-person suffix, and reiqam ("empty", H7387) functions adverbially, describing the manner of appearing rather than the state of the face itself.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the consequence for non-redemption of the donkey as τιμὴν δώσεις ("you will give a price/value"), differing from the Hebrew va-'araftO ("and you will break its neck", H6202), which specifies breaking the neck. The Vulgate follows the Hebrew sense more closely with "occidetur" ("it will be killed"), though it does not specify the neck-breaking method the Hebrew verb denotes. Regarding the final clause, the Hebrew yera'u (H7200G) is third-person plural passive/reflexive ("people will present themselves" or "will be seen"), while the LXX ὀφθήσῃ and Vulgate "apparebis" both shift to second-person singular ("you will appear"), aligning the subject with the addressee of the earlier redemption commands rather than the plural form found in the Hebrew.