Exodus 40:4

Summary

Exodus 40:4 instructs Moses to bring the table into the tabernacle and set its arrangement in order, then to bring in the lampstand and set up its lamps. The verse is composed of four sequential commands, each expressed with a verb in the second-person masculine singular.

Key words

• he.ve.Ta ("you will bring", H0935P) — hiphil (causative) sequential perfect, repeated twice (for the table and the lampstand), indicating the causative act of "bringing in" an object into a space.
• 'a.rakh.Ta ("you will arrange", H6186A) — qal sequential perfect, describing the simple act of putting something in order, applied to the table.
• er.K ("arrangement", H6187) with suffix o ("its", H9023) — construct noun + pronominal suffix, forming "its arrangement," referring back to the table's own set order.
• ha.'a.lei.Ta ("you will lift up", H5927H) — hiphil sequential perfect, a causative verb of elevation, used here for setting up the lamps.
• ne.ro.Tei.ha ("its lamps", H5216A + H9024) — feminine plural noun in construct with a feminine suffix, agreeing with me.no.Rah ("lampstand", H4501), which is grammatically feminine.

What the text says

The verse is built as a chain of four sequential perfect verbs, each introduced by the narrative ve ("and", H9001), a common construction in Biblical Hebrew for listing consecutive instructions that continue from a preceding command (in this case, instructions about the tabernacle's furnishings). The pattern alternates between hiphil verbs of movement (he.ve.Ta, "you will bring," used for both the table and the lampstand) and verbs describing what is done once the object is in place ('a.rakh.Ta, "you will arrange," for the table; ha.'a.lei.Ta, "you will lift up," for the lampstand's lamps).

The object er.K-o ("its arrangement") uses a construct form with a suffix referring to the table, indicating that the table has an "arrangement" proper to it — the text does not specify further here what that arrangement contains, only that it must be set in its due order. Similarly, ne.ro.Tei.ha ("its lamps") attaches to the lampstand via a feminine suffix, showing grammatical agreement between the feminine noun me.no.Rah and its lamps. The direct object marker 'et (H0853) appears four times, marking each item — the table, its arrangement, the lampstand, and its lamps — as the direct object of the respective verb, though it is not translated.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders ha.'a.lei.Ta ("you will lift up") with ἐπιθήσεις ("you will place upon"), a verb of placement rather than elevation, differing from the Hebrew's causative sense of "lifting up" the lamps. The Vulgate renders the sequence more loosely with "Candelabrum stabit cum lucernis suis" ("the lampstand will stand with its lamps"), using a stative construction rather than a command verb, unlike the imperative-sequential form of the Hebrew and the LXX's future-tense verbs.