Exodus 36:3

Summary

This verse describes how the skilled workers received from Moses all the contributions that the Israelites had brought for the sanctuary's construction work. It also notes that the people continued bringing additional freewill offerings on a daily, morning basis.

Key words

• yikchu ("they received", H3947) — qal narrative form indicating a completed sequential action: the craftsmen taking the materials.
• terumah ("contribution", H8641) — feminine singular noun with definite article, referring to the collected offering material as a defined whole.
• hevi'u ("they had brought", H0935) — hiphil (causative) perfect, appearing twice (lines 12 and 26); the causative stem marks an action of "causing to come/bringing," and the perfect aspect marks it as completed prior to or ongoing relative to the main narrative.
• avodat ("service of", H5656) — construct form linking to haqqodesh ("the holy place", H6944), forming the phrase "service of the holy place."
• nedavah ("freewill offering", H5071) — feminine singular noun marking a voluntary contribution distinct from the terumah already collected.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence opens with a narrative va- ("and", H9001) attached to yikchu, continuing the story sequence from the preceding verses. The subject of yikchu is implied (the craftsmen mentioned earlier in the chapter), and the phrase mi-lifnei Mosheh ("from before Moses", H9006+H9005+H6440) uses a construct noun penei ("face/presence of") to indicate that the materials were taken from Moses' custody or presence, rather than a simple "from him."

The object of the reception is marked by 'et (H0853, untranslated object marker) followed by kol-haterumah ("all the contribution", H3605+H9009+H8641), which is further specified by a relative clause introduced by 'asher ("which", H0834): "which the sons of Israel had brought." The verb in this relative clause, hevi'u, is hiphil perfect, marking the bringing as a completed prior action relative to the receiving.

The purpose clause lim'lekhet 'avodat haqqodesh ("for the work of the service of the holy [place]") stacks three nouns in construct chains (melekhet → avodat → haqqodesh), a common Hebrew way of building compound genitival phrases without separate prepositions. The infinitive la'asot ("to do", H6213) with the object suffix -ah ("it", H9034) doubles back to state the purpose: "to do/make it" (referring to the terumah or the work).

The second half of the verse shifts subject with ve-hem ("and they", H9002+H1992), an independent pronoun placed before the verb hevi'u (repeated from earlier), which the data marks again as hiphil perfect — here describing an ongoing or repeated action of the people continuing to bring nedavah ("freewill offering", H5071). The phrase baboqer baboqer ("in the morning, in the morning", H9003+H1242 repeated) uses reduplication, a Hebrew construction that conveys repetition or distribution — "morning after morning" — rather than a single morning event.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders mi-lifnei Mosheh ("from before Moses") as παρὰ Μωσῆ ("from Moses"), without reproducing the "face/presence" (penei) construct found in the Hebrew. The Vulgate's tradidit eis ("he handed over to them") shifts the grammatical subject: where the Hebrew has the craftsmen as subject of yikchu ("they received"), the Vulgate frames Moses as the one who "handed over," an active-voice restructuring not present in the Hebrew's verb form. The Vulgate also renders baboqer baboqer as quotidie mane ("daily, in the morning"), interpreting the reduplication as daily repetition, while the LXX's τὸ πρωί ("the morning") does not reproduce the doubling found in the Hebrew.