Exodus 40:2

Summary

Exodus 40:2 specifies a precise date — the first day of the first month — on which Moses is instructed to erect the sanctuary structure, described in Hebrew through a double construct phrase referring to the "tabernacle" and the "tent of meeting."

Key words

• yom ("[the] day of", H3117) — masculine singular construct, opening the temporal phrase and linking directly to "the month."
• chodesh ("month", H2320) — appears twice (lines 4 and 10), once with the article marking "the month" as a specific reference point, once anarthrous in the phrase "to the month."
• rishon ("first", H7223) — ordinal number agreeing with ha-chodesh, fixing the month as the first of the cycle.
• taqim ("you will set up", H6965) — Hiphil imperfect, 2nd person masculine singular; the Hiphil stem is causative, meaning the subject causes the structure to stand upright, not merely places it.
• mishkan ("[the] tabernacle of", H4908) — masculine singular construct, syntactically bound to the following noun ohel, forming a construct chain rather than two separate objects.

What the text says

The verse opens with two overlapping temporal expressions: be-yom ha-chodesh ha-rishon ("on the day of the first month") followed by be-echad la-chodesh ("on one/the first [day] of the month"). This redundancy in the Hebrew — naming the month as "first" and then specifying "day one" — pins down the date with unusual precision, a pattern found elsewhere in dating formulas of the text.

The main clause uses taqim, a Hiphil imperfect verb built on the root qum ("to stand"). The Hiphil stem shifts the basic meaning "to stand" into "to cause to stand" — that is, "to erect" or "set up," with the causative sense embedded in the verb form itself rather than requiring a separate helper verb. The imperfect aspect marks this as an instruction pointed toward future/incomplete action, consistent with a command.

The object of the verb is introduced by et (H0853, the untranslated direct-object marker) followed by a construct chain: mishkan ("tabernacle of") governing ohel ("tent of"), which itself governs mo'ed ("meeting"). Grammatically this reads as "the tabernacle-of-the-tent-of-meeting" — a nested genitive construction where mishkan is bound directly to the following noun rather than standing as an independent, separately named object.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the object simply as τὴν σκηνὴν τοῦ μαρτυρίου ("the tent of the testimony/witness"), producing a single noun phrase rather than reflecting the double Hebrew construct mishkan + ohel mo'ed. The Vulgate similarly gives tabernaculum testimonii ("tabernacle of testimony"), using "testimony" where the Hebrew here has mo'ed ("meeting"), collapsing the Hebrew's two-part construct chain into one phrase. The BSB English translation restores two elements as an appositive pair ("the tabernacle, the Tent of Meeting"), which differs structurally from the Hebrew's single unbroken construct chain.