Exodus 37:3

Summary

The verse describes the casting of four gold rings attached to the four feet (or corners) of an object, with two rings placed on one side and two rings on the opposite side. The subject (unnamed here, but referring to the craftsman) performs a single casting action that produces multiple rings distributed symmetrically.

Key words

• yitzoq ("he cast", H3332H) — qal verb in narrative form (with the vav-conversive prefix), indicating a single completed action moving the story forward: "and he cast."
• tabbe'ot ("rings of", H2885) — feminine plural noun in construct state, meaning it is grammatically bound to the following word (zahav, "gold"), forming "rings of gold."
• pa'amotav ("its feet", H6471) — feminine plural noun in construct with a 3rd person masculine singular suffix ("its"), specifying the four feet to which the rings are attached.
• tzal'o ("its side", H6763) — feminine singular noun in construct with the same suffix, repeated twice to mark first one side, then the other.
• ha'echat / hashenit ("the one" H0259 / "the second" H8145) — feminine ordinal/cardinal adjectives with the definite article, used to distinguish the two sides referenced by tzal'o.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence opens with the narrative verb yitzoq, "and he cast," which carries the entire action of the verse; everything after it specifies quantities and locations. The object cast is expressed through the construct chain arba tabbe'ot zahav ("four rings of gold"), where the number arba (H0702) governs the plural noun tabbe'ot, itself bound to zahav ("gold"). This chain is repeated with arba pa'amotav ("four of its feet"), again using the construct number followed by the plural noun with a possessive suffix, showing that the rings are distributed one per foot.

The second half of the verse shifts to describing placement using al ("on") twice, each time followed by tzal'o ("its side") with the same suffix, distinguished only by the ordinal terms ha'echat ("the one") and hashenit ("the second"). This construction — repeating the noun "side" with its suffix rather than using a single word for "both sides" — is a feature of Hebrew narrative style that creates a mirrored, symmetrical description: two rings on one side, two rings on the second side. The suffixes throughout (-o, "its") consistently point back to the object being described, though the object itself is not named within this verse and must be supplied from context.

Differences between versions

The Septuagint text provided (Swete) does not correspond to this verse in content; it describes the making of a veil (katapetasma) of hyacinth, purple, scarlet, and linen with woven cherubim, rather than the casting of rings on feet. This reflects a difference in versification between the Hebrew and Greek textual traditions in this section of Exodus, where chapter and verse divisions do not align. The Vulgate, by contrast, closely follows the Hebrew structure, rendering conflans quatuor annulos aureos ("casting four golden rings") and preserving the two-rings-per-side distribution described in the Hebrew.