Exodus 37:11

Summary

The verse describes the overlaying of an object (likely the table mentioned in the surrounding context of Exodus 37) with pure gold, followed by the making of a decorative gold molding around it. Two sequential actions are reported using narrative verb forms.

Key words

• y.Tzaf ("he overlaid", H6823) — piel (intensive) stem, narrative form; the intensive stem conveys a thorough covering action, not a partial one.
• za.Hav ("gold", H2091) — masculine singular noun, appears twice, once qualified by ta.Hor, once in construct with zer.
• ta.Hor ("pure", H2889) — masculine singular adjective modifying za.Hav, specifying the quality of the gold used for overlaying.
• i.Ya.'as ("he made", H6213H) — qal (simple) stem, narrative form, marking the second sequential action.
• zer ("a molding of", H2213) — masculine singular noun in construct state, meaning it is grammatically bound to the following noun za.Hav ("gold"), forming the phrase "a molding of gold."

What the text says

The verse is built on two parallel narrative clauses joined by the vav consecutive (va, H9001), a construction that chains sequential actions in Biblical Hebrew narrative: first y.Tzaf ("he overlaid") and then i.Ya.'as ("he made"). Both verbs carry an unstated third-person masculine singular subject ("he"), continuing from the preceding narrative context, and both take the object marker 'o.T (H0853) with a pronominal suffix o ("it"/"his"), referring back to an antecedent object not named within this verse itself.

The first clause specifies the material and its quality: za.Hav ta.Hor ("pure gold"), using an adjective directly modifying the noun. The second clause uses a construct chain, zer za.Hav ("molding of gold"), where the construct state of zer binds it grammatically to za.Hav, indicating that the molding is made of gold rather than merely decorated with it. The final word, sa.Viv ("all around", H5439G), is a common-gender noun functioning adverbially to indicate the spatial extent of the molding — it encircles the object completely rather than covering only part of it.

Differences between versions

The Septuagint text provided (Swete) does not correspond to the same content as the Hebrew, Vulgate, and modern translations for this verse; it instead describes measurements of a side or wing ("the side toward the east, fifty cubits") rather than an overlay of gold and a molding. This represents a structural divergence in the textual tradition at this point rather than a translation choice, and the Hebrew, Vulgate, and modern versions (BSB, RV1909, SBLIBRE) align closely with each other in content, describing the gold overlay and surrounding molding.