Exodus 34:21

Summary

The verse instructs six days of labor followed by rest on the seventh day, then reiterates that this rest applies even during the agricultural seasons of plowing and harvest. The command uses two parallel time-based clauses, both ending in the same verb for "rest."

Key words

• ta'avod ("you will labor", H5647I) — qal imperfect, second person masculine singular, expressing an ongoing or repeated future action tied to the six-day period.
• tishbot ("you will rest", H7673A) — qal imperfect, same person/number as ta'avod; it appears twice in the verse, once after "the seventh day" and once after "harvest time."
• chorish ("plowing time", H2758) — masculine singular noun with prefixed preposition and article (be-ha-), marking a specific agricultural season.
• qatzir ("harvest time", H7105A) — masculine singular noun, parallel in form to chorish, joined by the conjunction u- ("and").
• shevi'i ("seventh", H7637) — ordinal number, masculine singular, modifying "the day" (ha-yom) to specify which day of the sequence is meant.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence divides into two balanced clauses. The first states shet yamim ta'avod ("six of days you will labor"), using shet (H8337) in construct form to link the numeral directly to yamim ("days", H3117G). The second clause, u-va-yom ha-shevi'i tishbot ("and on the seventh day you will rest"), places the ordinal shevi'i after the definite noun yom, a standard Hebrew ordering for ordinal numbers.

The verse then adds a further clause: be-chorish u-va-qatzir tishbot ("in plowing time and in harvest time you will rest"). This repeats the verb tishbot rather than referring back to the earlier rest command with a pronoun or elliptical construction. Both instances of tishbot are morphologically identical — qal imperfect, second masculine singular — which creates a verbal echo binding the general weekly rest to its application in the specific agricultural seasons of chorish ("plowing", H2758) and qatzir ("harvest", H7105A). The two nouns are structurally parallel, each introduced by the preposition-plus-article combination be-/va-.

Differences between versions

The Septuagint (LXXSWETE) renders the rest commands with nominal forms — κατάπαυσις ("rest/cessation") and κότα.παῦσις — rather than repeating a finite verb as the Hebrew does with tishbot twice. This shifts the construction from a verbal command to more of a nominal statement in Greek.

The Vulgate (VULCLEM) uses infinitives arare ("to plow") and metere ("to reap") instead of the Hebrew nouns chorish and qatzir, converting the time-designations for seasons into verbal actions being ceased ("cessabis arare et metere" — "you shall cease to plow and to reap").