Exodus 35:21

Summary

Exodus 35:21 describes how every person whose heart moved them, and everyone whose spirit impelled them, came and brought a contribution to Yehovah for the work of the Tent of Meeting, for all its service, and for the sacred garments. The verse pairs two parallel relative clauses describing internal motivation before naming the object brought.

Key words

• leb ("heart", H3820A) — construct noun with pronominal suffix o ("his"), forming "his heart," the organ said to "lift" the person to act.
• nasa ("it lifted", H5375S) — qal perfect, third person masculine, describing a completed inner impulse; literally "his heart lifted him."
• ruach ("spirit", H7307G) — construct noun with suffix "his," parallel to leb, naming a second faculty of motivation.
• nadvah ("it impelled", H5068) — qal perfect, third person feminine (agreeing with ruach, grammatically feminine), the verb of voluntary impulse.
• terumat ("contribution of", H8641) — construct feminine noun, linking the object brought to Yehovah (H3068G) as recipient.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence opens with the narrative verb vayyavo'u ("and they came", H0935G), followed by two parallel relative constructions built on the pattern "every man whom X did to him." The first uses leb ("heart") as subject of nasa ("it lifted"), with a pronominal suffix referring back to the person: literally "every man whose heart lifted him." The second clause mirrors this with ruach ("spirit") as subject of nadvah ("it impelled"), followed by the direct object marker oto ("him") — again pointing back to the person moved. Grammatically, both leb and ruach function as grammatical subjects that act upon the person, rather than the person acting independently; the Hebrew idiom frames motivation as something the heart or spirit "does to" someone, which English renderings like "whose heart stirred him" attempt to preserve through paraphrase rather than literal structure.

The second half of the verse shifts to a second main verb, hevi'u ("they brought", H0935P), a hiphil (causative) form distinct from the opening qal vayyavo'u. This causative verb governs the object marked by et, terumat Yehovah ("the contribution of Yehovah", H8641/H3068G), followed by a chain of construct phrases specifying purpose: li-melekhet ohel mo'ed ("for the work of the tent of meeting"), u-le-khol avodato ("and for all its service"), and u-le-vigdei ha-qodesh ("and for the garments of holiness"). Each phrase uses the preposition le ("for") to mark purpose, and the construct chains stack multiple layers of "X of Y" relationships.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the two Hebrew relative clauses (leb/nasa and ruach/nadvah) with parallel Greek clauses using "heart" (καρδία) and "soul" (ψυχῇ) rather than "spirit," and adds the term ἀφαίρεμα ("offering") twice, where the Hebrew states terumat Yehovah only once. The LXX also includes the phrase κρῖ ἤνεγκαν ("they brought grain"), which has no corresponding lexical item in the provided Hebrew text. The Vulgate compresses the two Hebrew motivational clauses into a single phrase, "mente promptissima atque devota" ("with a most ready and devout mind"), collapsing the leb/ruach parallelism into one description, and adds "primitias" ("firstfruits"), a term not present in the Hebrew's terumah ("contribution").