Exodus 35:3

Summary

The verse gives a prohibition against kindling fire in any dwelling place on the Sabbath day. It is formulated as a direct negative command addressed to a plural group ("you all"), specifying both the scope of the prohibition (all dwelling places) and its temporal limit (the Sabbath day).

Key words

• te.va.'a.Ru ("you must kindle", H1197A) — piel imperfect, 2nd person masculine plural: the piel stem gives an intensive/causative nuance ("to cause to burn" rather than simply "to burn"), and the imperfect combined with the preceding negation lo' ("not", H3808) forms a durative prohibition rather than a one-time command.
• 'Esh ("fire", H0784) — singular common noun functioning as the direct object of the verb, naming the specific substance forbidden.
• mo.she.vo.tei.Khem ("dwelling places of you", H4186 + H9026) — feminine plural noun in construct with the 2nd person plural suffix, meaning literally "your dwelling-places"; the plural form indicates that the prohibition applies distributively across every place of residence, not to a single collective dwelling.
• Khol ("all", H3605) — masculine singular noun in construct governing the following plural noun, producing the sense "all of" or "every one of" the dwelling places.
• sha.Bat ("sabbath", H7676) — feminine singular noun with the definite article ha. ("the", H9009), marking a specific, known day rather than a generic rest day.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built around the negated verb te.va.'a.Ru, which stands first in the clause and governs the rest of the sentence. The piel stem of H1197A conveys an intensified or causative sense of burning — "to kindle" or "to make burn" — distinct from a simple qal "to burn." Because the verb is imperfect and preceded by lo', the construction functions as a general prohibition addressed to the community as a whole (the plural verbal form), not to a single individual.

The phrase be.Khol mo.she.vo.tei.Khem ("in all the dwelling-places of you") uses a construct chain: Khol ("all", H3605) governs mo.she.vo.tei.Khem ("dwelling places of you"), and the plural form of the noun indicates that each individual dwelling — not merely a shared or central one — falls under the restriction. The final phrase, be.Yom ha.sha.Bat ("on the day of the Sabbath"), uses a construct noun Yom ("day of", H3117G) followed by the definite ha.sha.Bat, anchoring the prohibition to a specific recurring day rather than to days in general.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders te.va.'a.Ru with καύσετε ("you will burn/kindle"), a future indicative rather than a prohibitive imperfect, though the negation οὐ still produces a command in effect. The LXX also adds ἐγὼ κύριος ("I [am the] Lord") at the end, a phrase not present in the Hebrew text given. The Vulgate's succendetis similarly uses a future form paralleling the Hebrew's imperfect-as-command structure, and it renders mo.she.vo.tei.Khem as habitaculis vestris ("your habitations"), matching the plural sense of the Hebrew construct phrase.