Exodus 35:13

Summary

Exodus 35:13 lists cultic furnishings to be included among the offerings/materials for the tabernacle: the table, its poles, all its utensils, and the bread of the presence. The verse is a simple chain of four objects joined by conjunctions, each marked as a direct object.

Key words

• shulchan ("table", H7979) — masculine singular noun, the central object of the list, referring to the table used in the sanctuary.
• badav ("poles", H0905G) — masculine plural construct noun with 3rd person suffix ("its"), meaning "its poles," i.e., the poles belonging to the table.
• kelav ("articles/utensils", H3627) — masculine plural construct noun with 3rd person suffix, preceded by kol ("all", H3605), forming "all its utensils."
• lechem ("bread", H3899H) — masculine singular construct noun, beginning the construct phrase "bread of the presence."
• panim ("presence/faces", H6440H) — masculine plural noun, completing the construct chain with lechem; grammatically plural though referring to a single concept.

What the text says

The verse is built as a sequence of four items, each introduced by the direct object marker 'et (H0853, untranslated) and linked by the conjunction ve- ("and", H9002). This repetition of 'et...ve'et...ve'et...ve'et marks a formal enumeration, typical of inventory-style lists in the tabernacle instructions, where each item is treated as a distinct direct object of an implied verb from the wider context (commanding the people to bring or make these things).

The phrase bada(v) ("its poles") and kol-kelav ("all its utensils") use construct plural nouns with pronominal suffixes, both referring back to hashulchan ("the table"), showing that the poles and utensils are grammatically and conceptually attached to the table as its accessories.

The final phrase, lechem hapanim, is a construct chain literally rendering "bread of the faces/presence" — lechem ("bread") stands in construct relation to panim ("presence"), a plural noun with no independent singular form in this sense. The plural form of panim is grammatically fixed and does not imply multiple breads or multiple "presences"; it functions as a single conceptual unit describing this specific type of bread.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew, Vulgate ("propositionis panibus"), and Spanish versions (RV1909, SBLIBRE) all render lechem hapanim consistently as "bread of the presence/proposition." However, the LXX text supplied here ("καὶ τοὺς λίθους τῆς σμαράγδου" — "and the emerald stones") does not correspond to the Hebrew content of this verse at all; it reflects material found elsewhere in the Exodus tabernacle account, since the Greek Exodus text follows a different internal ordering of the tabernacle materials list in this chapter.