Exodus 36:7

Summary

Exodus 36:7 states that the material already collected was sufficient — indeed more than sufficient — to complete all the work required for the sanctuary's construction. The verse closes the narrative unit describing the artisans' declaration to Moses that the people had brought too much material.

Key words

• ha.melaKhah ("the work", H4399) — feminine singular noun with definite article, repeated twice in the verse (lines 3 and 10), framing the sentence around "the work" as its subject and its goal.
• haYetah ("it was", H1961) — qal perfect, third person feminine singular, agreeing with melakhah; marks a completed state, "the work had become/was."
• dai ("sufficiency", H1767) — construct noun followed by the third masculine plural suffix -am ("their"), literally "the sufficiency of them," meaning "enough for them."
• la'aSot ("to do", H6213A) — qal infinitive construct with prefixed le-, expressing purpose: "in order to do it."
• hoTer ("it was more than enough", H3498) — hiphil infinitive absolute, a causative form used without a finite verb to intensify the preceding statement, adding the sense of surplus beyond mere sufficiency.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built around the double occurrence of ha.melaKhah ("the work"): the first instance is the grammatical subject ("the work was..."), and the second appears inside the phrase le-khol ha-melakhah ("for all the work"), reinforcing the totality of what needed to be accomplished. The verb haYetah ("it was") is a simple qal perfect, indicating a completed situation rather than an ongoing process — the sufficiency is presented as an established fact.

The noun dai ("sufficiency") is in construct form with the suffix -am ("their"), producing dayyam, "their sufficiency" or "enough for them." This construct chain ties the abstract idea of "enough" directly to the people who supplied the material. The infinitive la'asot ("to do it") explains the purpose of that sufficiency — the material was enough specifically for the task of construction, with otah ("it," H0853 + suffix) referring back to ha.melakhah.

The final word, hoTer, is grammatically striking: it is a hiphil infinitive absolute, a verb form normally used together with a finite verb of the same root to intensify meaning, but here it stands alone after the conjunction ve- ("and"). This absolute use conveys an open-ended, emphatic sense of "and there was still more left over," without specifying tense or subject explicitly — the grammar itself carries the notion of excess.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the Hebrew's doubled ha.melaKhah with a single Greek term (τὰ ἔργα... τὴν κατασκευήν, "the works... the construction"), and translates the emphatic infinitive absolute hoTer with a finite verb, προσκατέλιπον ("they left over besides"), turning the Hebrew's non-finite intensifier into a normal past-tense clause. The Vulgate similarly uses two finite verbs, sufficerent et superabundarent ("they were sufficient and were superabundant"), where the Hebrew has one finite verb (haYetah) followed by a bare infinitive absolute (hoTer) rather than two coordinated finite verbs.