Exodus 39:42

Summary

The verse closes the account of the tabernacle's construction by stating that the Israelites carried out the entire work exactly as Yehovah had commanded Moses. The sentence uses a correlative "as...so" structure to frame the people's action as full compliance with a prior divine instruction.

Key words

• khol ("all", H3605) — appears twice (positions 2 and 13), first governing the scope of the command, then the scope of the work; the repetition frames the whole verse as a totality statement.
• tzivvah ("he had commanded", H6680) — Piel perfect, third person masculine singular; the Piel stem marks an intensive/directive act of command, and the perfect aspect places this command as prior to the action described later in the verse.
• ken ("so", H3651C) — adverb that functions as the second half of the correlative pair ke-khol...ken ("according to all...so"), signaling exact correspondence between command and execution.
• 'asu ("they did", H6213A) — Qal perfect, third person plural; a simple, non-intensive verb form indicating the completed collective action of "the people of Israel."
• 'avodah ("labor", H5656I) — feminine singular noun with the definite article ha (H9009) attached to kol ("all the labor"), naming the object of the completed work.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built on a correlative construction: ke-khol asher tzivvah YHWH et-Mosheh ("according to all that Yehovah had commanded Moses") is placed first, followed by ken 'asu bene Yisra'el ("so the people of Israel did"). This word order foregrounds the divine command before naming the human agents and their action, so the grammar itself subordinates the Israelites' activity to Yehovah's prior instruction. The verb tzivvah is in the Piel perfect, expressing a completed directive act, while 'asu is in the Qal perfect, a simple completed action — the contrast in verbal stems (intensive command vs. plain execution) is present in the Hebrew but not visible in translations that render both simply as past-tense verbs. The object marker 'et (H0853) appears twice (before "Moses" and before "all the labor") without semantic content, marking the direct objects of the verbs tzivvah and 'asu respectively.

Differences between versions

The Vulgate (Clementine) text given, obtulerunt filii Israël, sicut præceperat Dominus ("the children of Israel offered, just as the Lord had commanded"), reverses the Hebrew word order, placing the subject and verb first and the comparative clause second, whereas the Hebrew places the "as...so" comparison before naming the subject. The Vulgate also uses obtulerunt ("they offered"), differing from the Hebrew verb 'asu ("they did/made", H6213A), and omits explicit mention of "Moses" as the recipient of the command. The BSB's "had done" reflects a pluperfect nuance not grammatically marked in the Hebrew Qal perfect 'asu, while RV1909's "así hicieron" and SBLIBRE's "hicieron" render it as a simple past, closer to the verb's basic aspectual form.