Exodus 38:29

Summary

The verse records the total amount of bronze collected from the wave-offering used for the tabernacle construction, giving the weight in two units: talents and shekels. The Hebrew states the amount as seventy talents plus two thousand four hundred shekels.

Key words

• nechoshet ("bronze of", H5178A) — feminine singular noun in construct state, meaning it is bound to the following word, producing "bronze of the wave-offering" rather than a standalone noun.
• tenufah ("wave-offering", H8573) — feminine singular noun naming the type of offering from which the bronze came; it identifies the source, not an independent object being weighed.
• kikkar ("talent", H3603H) — feminine singular noun functioning as a unit of weight; despite following the number "seventy" (shiv'im, H7657), it stays grammatically singular, a common pattern with weight/measure nouns after numerals in Biblical Hebrew.
• 'alpayim ("two thousand", H0505G) — dual form of the numeral, literally "a pair of thousands," used instead of a separate multiplication construction.
• shekel (H8255) — masculine singular noun, again remaining singular after the compound number "two thousand four hundred," following the same pattern as kikkar.

What the text says

The sentence is built as a construct chain followed by a numerical tally. Nechoshet ha-tenufah ("the bronze of the wave-offering") forms the subject: bronze specifically associated with (i.e., coming from) the wave-offering, marked by the construct relationship between nechoshet and tenufah. The predicate is purely numerical: shiv'im kikkar ("seventy talent") gives the first unit, and ve-'alpayim ve-arba'-me'ot shakel ("and two thousand and four hundred shekel") gives the second. Hebrew numeral syntax here keeps the measured nouns (kikkar, shekel) in the singular even though the quantities are plural in meaning — a standard feature when a noun of measure follows a cardinal number, differing from ordinary noun-number agreement elsewhere in the language. The construct chain 'arba'-me'ot ("four hundred," H0702 construct + H3967) shows the numeral "four" bound to "hundred," a typical way of forming compound numbers in Hebrew.

Differences between versions

The RV1909 and BSB preserve the same two units, talents and shekels, matching the Hebrew structure. The Vulgate (VULCLEM) phrases the totals slightly differently ("talenta septuaginta duo millia, et quadringenti supra sicli"), listing the shekel figure as an addition "above" the talents, though the underlying quantities are the same. The SBLIBRE translation abandons the talent/shekel system entirely, converting the total into an approximate modern weight ("unos dos mil cuatrocientos kilos"), which does not reflect the original units named in the Hebrew text.