Exodus 39:3

Summary

Exodus 39:3 describes a metalworking technique used in constructing the priestly garments: gold was hammered into thin sheets, cut into threads, and these threads were then worked into the blue, purple, and scarlet yarns and the fine linen, produced by a skilled craftsman.

Key words

• y.ra.ke.'U ("they hammered out", H7554) — piel narrative verb, intensive stem, indicating a deliberate, forceful working of the metal (the piel intensifies simple "to spread/beat" into "to hammer/flatten").
• pa.Chei ("thin plates of", H6341B) — masculine plural noun in construct state, linking to "the gold" that follows; construct form ties the plates directly to their material.
• ki.Tzetz ("he cut [them] up", H7112) — piel sequential perfect, continuing the narrative chain begun by the first verb, again with intensive force ("cut up" rather than a single simple cut).
• pe.ti.Lim ("threads", H6616) — masculine plural, the result of the cutting: the gold plates become threads for weaving.
• cho.Shev ("a skillful worker", H2803G) — qal participle, masculine singular, functioning as a substantive ("one who devises/designs"), describing the agent behind the ma.'a.Seh ("work of", H4639G) construct phrase.

What the text says

The verse is built on two sequential verbs, y.ra.ke.'U ("they hammered out", H7554) and ki.Tzetz ("he cut [them] up", H7112), both in the piel stem, which in Biblical Hebrew often marks intensive or repeated action rather than a single simple act. The narrative vav on the first verb and the switch to a sequential perfect on the second maintain the flow of the account: first the gold is flattened into pa.Chei ("thin plates of", H6341B), then it is reduced to pe.ti.Lim ("threads", H6616). Notably, the subject shifts grammatically from plural ("they") to singular ("he") between the two verbs, though the referents throughout are the craftsmen at work.

The threads are then destined, via the infinitive 'a.Sot ("to do/work", H6213A), to be placed be.Tokh ("among/in the midst of", H8432) — repeated four times as a construct noun — each of the four textile materials: te.Khe.let ("violet stuff", H8504), 'ar.ga.Man ("purple", H0713), to.La.'at ha.Shani ("scarlet stuff", H8438B/H8144), and Shesh ("fine linen", H8336B). This fourfold repetition of Tokh structurally emphasizes that the gold thread was integrated into each material individually, not simply mixed in as a whole. The final phrase, ma.'a.Seh cho.Shev ("work of a skillful worker", H4639G/H2803G), a construct chain ending in a qal participle, closes the verse by attributing the result to skilled human craftsmanship, using a participial form that names the agent by their action ("the one who designs/devises").

Differences between versions

The Vulgate (VULCLEM) closely follows the Hebrew sequence: hammering gold sheets (bracteas aureas), then thinning them into threads (extenuavit in fila) for interweaving with the colored materials. The Greek text supplied here (LXXSWETE) does not correspond to this content at all — it speaks of a census count ("everyone who passed the review, from twenty years old and upward... sixty myriads, three thousand five hundred fifty"), indicating the LXX text cited belongs to a different passage than the Hebrew verse under discussion.