Exodus 35:25

Summary

Exodus 35:25 describes women skilled in handwork who personally spun thread and brought their finished work — dyed and undyed yarns — as a contribution toward the tabernacle materials. The verse pairs a description of the women's ability with the concrete result of their labor.

Key words

• chakhmat-lev ("skillful of", H2450 + "heart", H3820A) — a construct phrase literally "wise/skilled of heart," functioning as an adjectival description of the woman's ability in handcraft.
• yadeiha ("her hands", H3027G) — dual construct noun with pronominal suffix, marking that the spinning was done specifically "with her (own) hands," emphasizing direct manual action rather than delegated work.
• tavu ("they spun", H2901) — qal perfect, third person, indicating a completed action; the perfect aspect frames the spinning as an accomplished fact prior to the next narrated event.
• vayavi'u ("and they brought", H0935P) — hiphil narrative form (vav-consecutive), causative in stem, meaning the women caused the spun material to be brought/delivered; the narrative vav chains this action sequentially after the spinning.
• matveh ("that which was spun", H4299) — a noun denoting the product of spinning itself, the object that was brought, distinct from the raw material.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence opens with ve-khol-'ishah chakhmat-lev ("and every woman skillful of heart"), using a construct chain where "skillful" is bound to "heart," a common Biblical Hebrew idiom for competence or aptitude rather than emotional disposition. The subject is followed by the prepositional phrase be-yadeiha ("with her hands"), placed before the verb tavu ("they spun"), which is unusual word order (object/adverbial phrase before verb) and places emphasis on the manual, personal nature of the spinning.

The second clause shifts to narrative sequence with vayavi'u ("and they brought"), a hiphil verb marking causation — the women caused the matveh ("that which was spun") to be brought. This is followed by a list of materials, each introduced by the direct object marker 'et (H0853, untranslated): ha-tekhelet ("the violet stuff", H8504), ha-argaman ("the purple", H0713), tola'at ha-shani (construct phrase, "the scarlet stuff of the scarlet", H8438B + H8144), and ha-shesh ("the fine linen", H8336B). The repeated object markers and definite articles give the list a formal, itemized quality, cataloguing exactly what was produced and delivered.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders chakhmat-lev as sophē tē dianoia ("wise in understanding/mind"), shifting the semantic field from "heart" (H3820A) to "mind" (dianoia), a difference in the organ associated with skill. The Vulgate's doctae ("learned/taught") likewise diverges from the Hebrew's "heart" language, framing the women's ability as acquired knowledge rather than an innate quality of the "heart." The Hebrew construct tola'at ha-shani ("scarlet stuff of the scarlet") is rendered simply as kokkinon ("scarlet") in the LXX and vermiculum in the Vulgate, both collapsing the Hebrew's doubled construction into a single term.