Exodus 40:34

Summary

The verse reports two simultaneous events at the completion of the tabernacle: the cloud settles over the Tent of Meeting, and the glory of Yehovah fills the tabernacle itself. The sentence is built as two parallel clauses describing the same moment from different angles — the cloud from outside, the glory from inside.

Key words

• va-yekhas ("and it covered", H3680) — piel narrative verb (vayyiqtol), continuing the story sequence; the piel stem gives an intensive nuance to "covering."
• ha-'anan ("the cloud", H6051) — definite noun, the subject of the first clause, already known from earlier narrative context (marked by the article).
• 'ohel mo'ed ("tent of meeting", H0168/H4150) — construct chain, "tent of" + "meeting," naming the structure the cloud covers.
• khevod Yehovah ("glory of Yehovah", H3519/H3068) — construct chain, "glory of" + the divine name, subject of the second clause.
• male' ("it filled", H4390) — qal perfect, not introduced by a narrative vav-conversive; expresses a completed state rather than continuing the narrative chain.

What the text says

The verse divides into two balanced clauses joined by the conjunction u ("and", H9002). The first clause uses the narrative form va-yekhas ("and it covered"), which continues the ongoing story sequence begun earlier in the chapter — this is the normal way Biblical Hebrew narrates one event after another. The subject is ha-'anan ("the cloud"), and its object, marked by the untranslated direct-object marker 'et, is 'ohel mo'ed ("tent of meeting"), a construct phrase naming the sanctuary by its function as a meeting place.

The second clause breaks the narrative chain: instead of a vav-consecutive verb, it has u-khevod Yehovah ("and the glory of Yehovah") followed by male' ("it filled") in the plain qal perfect, without the narrative vav prefix. This grammatical shift sets the second clause slightly apart from strict sequential narration — in Biblical Hebrew, a perfect verb following a fronted subject (rather than the verb-first vayyiqtol pattern) can mark a state resulting from, or coinciding with, the action just narrated. Here it presents the filling of the mishkan ("tabernacle", H4908) as coextensive with the cloud's covering of the tent, rather than as a separate subsequent event. The two objects named — 'ohel mo'ed and ha-mishkan — are marked individually with 'et, though both refer to the same sanctuary structure, one by its function ("meeting") and one by its general name ("dwelling/tabernacle").

Differences between versions

The BSB and SBLIBRE renderings follow the Hebrew closely, translating 'anan as "cloud," 'ohel mo'ed as "Tent/Carpa de Reunión," and mishkan as "tabernacle/santuario." The Vulgate text supplied (VULCLEM) does not correspond to this Hebrew content; it describes the cloud leaving the tabernacle and the Israelites setting out on their journeys, a different narrative moment rather than a rendering of Exodus 40:34.