Exodus 37:24

Summary

The verse states the amount of material used to make the lampstand and its accessories: one kikkar ("talent") of pure gold. It closes the description of the lampstand's construction by specifying both the metal's purity and its total weight-unit.

Key words

• kikkar ("a talent of", H3603) — feminine singular noun in construct state, meaning it must be linked to what follows ("talent of gold"); it designates a specific unit of weight/mass.
• zahav ("gold", H2091) — masculine singular noun completing the construct chain begun by kikkar, identifying the material.
• tahor ("pure", H2889) — masculine singular adjective modifying zahav, specifying the quality of the gold used.
• asah ("he made", H6213) — qal perfect verb, third person masculine singular, indicating a completed action; the implied subject is the craftsman (unnamed in this verse).
• keley ("articles of", H3627) — masculine plural noun in construct state, meaning it depends on the following pronominal suffix ha ("its"), referring to the lampstand's accessories.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence opens with the construct phrase kikkar zahav tahor ("a talent of pure gold"), placing the material and its quantity before the verb — a common Biblical Hebrew pattern that emphasizes the object over the action. The verb asah ("he made") follows, marked as a completed (perfect) action, with an unnamed third-person subject understood from context (the craftsman previously named in the chapter). The direct object markers otah (H0853 + suffix "her/it") and 'et... keley-ha (H0853 + "its articles") both use the untranslated particle 'et, which in Hebrew grammar simply flags the following noun as the direct object of the verb; it carries no independent meaning.

The feminine suffix -ha ("its/her") attached to otah and to keley-ha refers back to a feminine noun mentioned earlier in the passage (the lampstand, grammatically feminine in Hebrew), even though the lampstand itself is not named again in this verse. The construct chain kol-keley-ha ("all its articles/utensils") groups every accessory of the lampstand as a single collective object of the verb asah.

Differences between versions

The Vulgate (Clementine) explicitly names candelabrum ("lampstand") as the object being weighed, a word not present in the Hebrew of this verse (the Hebrew relies on the feminine suffix -ha alone to imply it). The BSB similarly supplies "the lampstand" explicitly. The SBLIBRE converts the kikkar ("talent") into a modern metric approximation ("treinta y cuatro kilos," about thirty-four kilograms), a numerical equivalence not present in the Hebrew text itself, which only names the traditional unit kikkar.