Exodus 35:2

Summary

The verse establishes a six-day period for work and designates the seventh day as holy, a complete rest dedicated to Yehovah. It closes with a penalty clause: whoever performs work on that day is to be put to death.

Key words

• te'aseh ("it will be done", H6213A) — niphal imperfect, passive/impersonal construction: literally "work shall be done" rather than "you shall do work," removing the explicit human subject from the first clause.
• shabbat ("a sabbath of", H7676) — feminine singular construct, meaning it grammatically binds to the following word to form a phrase, "a sabbath of X."
• shabbaton ("sabbath observance", H7677) — the noun completing the construct chain begun by shabbat, intensifying the concept of rest/cessation.
• ha'oseh ("the one doing", H6213A) — qal active participle, masculine singular, functioning as "the doer" — a general subject ("anyone who does") rather than a finite verb form.
• yumat ("he will be put to death", H4191) — hophal imperfect, a causative-passive form: the subject does not kill himself but "is caused to be killed," i.e., is put to death by an external agent.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence divides into two halves marked by grammatical voice. The first clause, sheshet yamim te'aseh melakhah ("six days work will be done"), uses the niphal (passive) form te'aseh ("it will be done", H6213A), so the grammatical subject is melakhah ("work", H4399) itself, not a personal "you." This produces an impersonal statement about work occurring during six days, distinct from a direct command to a person.

The second clause shifts to qal active yihyeh ("it will be", H1961, "he will be" form) with the seventh day as subject, followed by the double expression shabbat shabbaton — a construct chain pairing shabbat ("a sabbath of", H7676) with shabbaton ("sabbath observance", H7677). This construct doubling intensifies the idea of rest, producing a phrase that could be rendered "a sabbath of sabbath-resting" or "complete rest," a nuance that single-word translations like "sabbath" cannot convey.

The final clause uses the participle ha'oseh ("the one doing", H6213A) as a generalized subject — "anyone who does" — followed by the hophal yumat ("he will be put to death", H4191), a causative-passive form indicating the subject is made to undergo death by an outside agent, rather than a reflexive or simple passive.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the opening clause as an active second-person command, ποιήσεις ἔργα ("you shall do works"), where the Hebrew te'aseh is niphal/impersonal ("work will be done"). The Vulgate similarly uses the active facietis ("you shall do"), also shifting to direct address absent in the Hebrew construction. For the final clause, the LXX uses τελευτάτω ("let him die/come to an end"), a general verb of dying, whereas the Hebrew yumat specifically denotes being caused to die (execution) via the hophal stem; the Vulgate's occidetur ("he shall be killed") aligns more closely with this causative-passive sense than the LXX's more neutral term.