Leviticus 23:17

Summary

Leviticus 23:17 instructs that from the Israelites' dwelling places, two loaves of bread are to be brought as a wave-offering, made from two-tenths of an ephah of fine flour, baked with leaven, and presented as firstfruits to Yehovah.

Key words

• mo.she.Vo.tei.khem ("dwelling places", H4186) — feminine plural construct with 2nd person plural suffix, marking the geographic origin ("from your [places of] dwelling") of what will be brought.
• ta.Vi'.u ("you will bring", H0935P) — hiphil imperfect, 2nd person masculine plural. The hiphil (causative) stem indicates causing something to come/arrive, rather than a simple verb "to go."
• lechem tenufah ("bread of a wave-offering", H3899H + H8573) — construct chain: lechem ("bread of") governs tenufah ("wave-offering"), literally "bread of waving," naming the category of offering before specifying its ingredients.
• chametz ("leaven", H2557A) — adjective, masculine singular, describing the state of the dough before baking.
• te.'a.Fei.nah ("they will be baked", H0644) — niphal (passive) imperfect, 3rd person feminine plural, agreeing with the feminine "tenths" or "flour" as the grammatical subject that undergoes baking.

What the text says

The verse opens with a prepositional phrase, mi-moshevoteikhem ("from your dwelling places"), placed before the main verb taviu ("you will bring"), a hiphil imperfect that frames the entire community's action as causative — the people cause the bread to arrive at the sanctuary from their homes. The object of the bringing is lechem tenufah, a construct pair identifying the bread's function as a "wave-offering" before any further description is given.

The following clause, shtayim shnei 'esronim ("two, two-tenths"), uses two forms of the numeral "two" (H8147) in succession — first absolute, then construct — specifying that there are two loaves, each made from two-tenths (of an ephah) of flour. The flour is then qualified as solet ("fine flour"), and the verb tihyeinah ("they will be", qal imperfect feminine plural) links the flour to its composition. The clause chametz te'afeinah ("leavened, they will be baked") places the adjective chametz before the niphal passive verb, describing the dough's state prior to the passive action of baking. The passage closes with bikkurim la-YHWH ("firstfruits to Yehovah"), a noun-plus-prepositional-phrase construction naming the offering's classification and recipient.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders lechem tenufah as artous epithema ("loaves, a presentation/setting-forth"), a term describing something placed or set rather than an act of "waving" as tenufah suggests in the Hebrew root. The Vulgate compresses the double "two" (shtayim shnei) into a single phrase, "duos... de duabus decimis" ("two... from two tenths"), differing from the Hebrew's repeated numeral structure, though the resulting quantity described is the same.