Exodus 34:22

Summary

The verse commands the observance of two agricultural festivals: the Chag Shavu'ot ("Festival of Weeks"), tied to the first cut of the wheat harvest, and the Chag ha'Asif ("Festival of Ingathering"), placed at the turning point of the year.

Key words

• Chag ("festival of", H2282) — masculine singular construct, appears twice, each time governing the following noun ("festival of Weeks", "festival of Ingathering").
• ta.'a.Seh ("you will celebrate", H6213A) — qal imperfect, 2nd person masculine singular; carries the force of an ongoing/future obligation and functions as the main verb for both festival clauses, since the second clause has no separate verb.
• bi.ku.Rei ("first-fruits of", H1061) — masculine plural construct, linking the festival to the ke.Tzir ("harvest of", H7105A) chi.Tim ("wheats", H2406), a triple construct chain specifying exactly which produce marks the occasion.
• te.ku.Fat ("circuit of", H8622) — feminine singular construct governing ha.Shanah ("the year", H8141); denotes a cyclical turning point rather than a fixed calendar date.
• 'a.Sif ("ingathering", H0614) — masculine singular noun with definite article, naming the harvest-gathering season itself.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built as two parallel construct chains sharing a single verb. The first chain, Chag Shavu'ot ("festival of Weeks"), is followed by a further construct sequence, bikurei ketzir chittim ("first-fruits of the harvest of wheats"), stacking three nouns in construct relation to pin down the timing: not the harvest in general, but its first-fruits, and specifically of wheat. The verb ta'aseh ("you will celebrate/do") appears only once, governing the first clause explicitly and, by ellipsis, the second clause as well — a common feature of Biblical Hebrew where a verb from one clause carries over syntactically to a following coordinated clause without repetition.

The second festival, Chag ha'Asif ("festival of the Ingathering"), is temporally anchored not by a harvest term but by tekufat hashanah ("the circuit/turning of the year"), a construct phrase built on tekufah, a noun associated with cyclical return rather than a punctual date. This gives the clause a sense of seasonal recurrence — the festival falls at the point where the annual cycle turns — rather than naming a fixed calendrical day.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders lekha ("for yourself", H9031) as μοι ("for me"), shifting the addressee-benefit from the second person to the first person (God). Where the Hebrew has bikurei ketzir chittim ("first-fruits of the harvest of wheats"), the LXX gives ἀρχὴν θερισμοῦ πυροῦ ("beginning of the wheat harvest"), replacing "first-fruits" with "beginning." For tekufat hashanah ("circuit of the year"), the LXX has μεσοῦντος τοῦ ἐνιαυτοῦ ("when the year is at its middle"), while the Vulgate reads "redeunte anni tempore" ("when the season of the year returns"), each construing the cyclical tekufah differently — as a midpoint versus a returning season.