Exodus 34:23

Summary

Exodus 34:23 specifies that every male of the community must present himself before "the Lord YHWH, the God of Israel" three times during the year. The verse uses a passive/reflexive verbal form for the act of appearing and a collective singular noun to designate the male population as a unit.

Key words

• sha.Losh ("three", H7969) — cardinal number opening the phrase, quantifying the recurring instances of appearance.
• pe.'a.Mim ("times", H6471) — masculine plural noun paired with the numeral, forming the temporal expression "three times."
• yera.'Eh ("he will present himself / will be seen", H7200G) — niphal imperfect of the root for "to see." The niphal stem is passive or reflexive, so the verb does not say the male "sees" but rather "is seen" or "presents himself," with the imperfect aspect marking an ongoing, repeated future obligation.
• zekhurcha ("your male", H2138 + H9021) — masculine singular noun in construct with the second-person suffix, following kol ("every/all", H3605) to form "every male of yours." The verb yera'eh is singular because it agrees with the singular collective kol, even though the referent is plural in sense.
• ha.'a.Don ("the lord", H0113) — noun with definite article, placed immediately before the divine name Yehovah (H3068G), producing a doubled designation "the Lord, YHWH."

What the text says

The sentence opens with a temporal phrase — shalosh pe'amim ba-shanah, "three times in the year" — placed before the verb, a common Hebrew word order for foregrounding temporal or circumstantial information. The main verb, yera'eh, is niphal, meaning the grammatical subject (kol-zekhurkha, "every male of yours") is not the semantic agent of "seeing" but the one who becomes visible or presents himself; the Hebrew construction leaves ambiguous whether this is purely passive ("will be seen") or reflexive-medial ("will present himself"), a nuance not always distinguishable in translation.

The object of this appearing is marked by 'et-penei, literally "with the face of," a construct expression meaning "in the presence of." This leads into a three-part divine designation: ha-'adon ("the lord/master," with definite article), Yehovah (the divine name), and 'elohei Yisra'el ("God of Israel," construct plural noun + proper name). The Hebrew thus stacks three distinct terms for the addressee of this appearance.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the divine designation simply as "Κυρίου τοῦ θεοῦ Ισραήλ" ("of the Lord, the God of Israel"), collapsing the Hebrew's separate term ha-'adon into "Κυρίου," so only two elements appear instead of three. The Vulgate preserves a three-part structure but translates ha-'adon as "omnipotentis" ("of the almighty") rather than a term meaning "lord/master," giving "omnipotentis Domini Dei Israël" where the Hebrew has "ha-'adon Yehovah 'elohei Yisra'el."