Exodus 34:26
רֵאשִׁית בִּכּוּרֵי אַדְמָתְךָ תָּבִיא בֵּית יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ לֹא־תְבַשֵּׁל גְּדִי בַּחֲלֵב אִמּֽוֹ׃ פ
✦ Hebrew interlinear
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✦ The same verse in five languages
רֵאשִׁ֗ית בִּכּוּרֵי֙ אַדְמָ֣תְךָ֔ תָּבִ֕יא בֵּ֖ית יְהוָ֣ה אֱלֹהֶ֑יךָ לֹא־תְבַשֵּׁ֥ל גְּדִ֖י בַּחֲלֵ֥ב אִמּֽוֹ׃ פ
τὰ πρωτογενήματα τῆς γῆς σου θήσεις εἰς τὸν οἶκον κυρίου τοῦ θεοῦ σου. οὐ προσοίσεις ἄρνα ἐν γόλακτι μητρὸς αὐτοῦ.
Greek text from Swete's edition, CC BY-SA 4.0
Latin (Vulgate)
Primitias frugum terræ tuæ offeres in domo Domini Dei tui. Non coques hædum in lacte matris suæ.
“Llevarás a la casa de Yehová tu Dios lo mejor de los primeros frutos de tus cosechas. “No cocines a un cabrito en la leche de su propia madre”.
Classic Spanish (Reina-Valera 1909)
La primicia de los primeros frutos de tu tierra meterás en la casa de Jehová tu Dios. No cocerás el cabrito en la leche de su madre.
Bring the best of the firstfruits of your soil to the house of the LORD your God. You must not cook a young goat in its mother’s milk.”
✦ What the text says
Summary
The verse contains two distinct commands: bringing the best of the first agricultural yield to the sanctuary of Yehovah, and a prohibition against cooking a young goat in its mother's milk. These two instructions appear joined without an explicit grammatical connector between them.
Key words
- re.Shit ("[the] first of", H7225H) — feminine singular construct noun, opening a double construct chain that intensifies the notion of "firstness" combined with bikkurei.
- bi.ku.Rei ("[the] first-fruits of", H1061) — masculine plural construct, stacked onto re.Shit to specify which produce is meant: the earliest yield of the ground.
- ta.Vi' ("you will bring", H0935P) — hiphil (causative) imperfect, second person masculine; the causative stem marks the subject as actively causing the produce to arrive at the sanctuary, not merely "going" there.
- te.va.Shel ("you will boil", H1310) — piel (intensive) imperfect, negated by lo' ("not", H3808); the piel stem denotes the specific cooking process of boiling/simmering, distinct from other cooking methods.
- cha.Lev ("[the] milk of", H2461) — masculine singular construct, linking to 'i.M ("mother", H0517) with a possessive suffix o ("its", H9023) to form "its mother's milk."
What the text says
The first clause builds a double construct chain: re.Shit of bikkurei of 'ad.Ma.te.kha ("your ground"). This stacking produces a superlative sense — not simply "firstfruits" but "the first of the firstfruits," emphasizing priority within an already-selective category. The verb ta.Vi' is hiphil, meaning the grammatical subject is not passively present but actively causes the offering to reach beit Yehovah 'elohei.kha ("the house of Yehovah your God") — a construct chain identifying the destination.
The second clause is grammatically independent, introduced by the negation lo' before the piel verb te.va.Shel. The piel stem here specifies boiling as the forbidden cooking method for ge.Di ("a kid", H1423, absolute form, not construct) done ba.cha.Lev 'i.mo ("in the milk of its mother"). The chain cha.Lev + 'i.M + suffix o produces "its mother's milk," tying the animal to its specific maternal source rather than milk in general. No syntactic conjunction (like "and") links the two commands in the Hebrew; they stand as two separate imperfect-verb clauses in sequence.
Differences between versions
The LXX renders ge.Di ("a kid", H1423) as ἄρνα ("lamb"), where the Hebrew specifies a kid (young goat). The Vulgate uses hædum ("young goat"), matching the Hebrew more closely than the LXX. Additionally, the LXX and Vulgate render ta.Vi' with θήσεις ("you will place/set") and offeres ("you will offer") respectively, both differing from the more literal "bring" sense carried by the Hebrew hiphil of H0935P.
This explanation describes the text using linguistic data; it adds no doctrine or confessional interpretation.