Numbers 18:29

Summary

The verse instructs that from every gift the Levites receive, they must set aside the contribution belonging to Yehovah — specifically the best portion, the sacred part of it. The Hebrew builds this through a chain of construct relationships, emphasizing that the offering must come from the finest portion available.

Key words

• mattenotei ("gifts", H4979) — feminine plural construct with the pronominal suffix khem ("your"), meaning "your gifts"; this establishes the source pool from which the offering is drawn.
• tarimu ("you will offer up", H7311A) — hiphil (causative) imperfect, second person masculine plural; the causative stem implies actively "lifting up" or "raising" a portion, not merely giving.
• terumat ("contribution of", H8641) — feminine singular construct, linked to Yehovah (H3068G); this is the technical term for a set-apart offering, distinct from ordinary gifts.
• chelbo ("its best", H2459) — masculine singular construct with suffix "its"; the underlying noun denotes "fat," here used to indicate the choicest or richest part.
• miqdesho ("its sacred part", H4720) — masculine singular construct with suffix "its," from a root related to holiness/sanctification, naming the specific consecrated portion.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built on a series of stacked construct chains: "from all mattenotei-khem" (your gifts) sets the source, then tarimu commands the action of lifting up "every terumat Yehovah" (contribution of Yehovah) from that source. The next clause narrows further: "from all its chelbo" (its fat/best) — specifying that the contribution must come from the richest portion — and finally identifies that portion as "miqdesho" (its sacred part), reinforced by the redundant prepositional phrase mimenu ("from it"). This layered construct structure (gift → contribution → best part → sacred part) narrows the object of the command progressively, a feature the English glosses render as parallel phrases but which in Hebrew functions as a single cascading chain of possession.

The verb tarimu, being hiphil, frames the action as causative — the offerer causes the portion to "rise" or be set apart, rather than simply handing it over. This aligns with the technical vocabulary of terumah (contribution) as a distinct liturgical category rather than an ordinary "gift" (mattanah).

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the second half of the verse with a disjunctive "ἢ" ("or"), separating "ἀφαίρεμα Κυρίῳ" (contribution to the Lord) from "ἀπὸ πάντων τῶν ἀπαρχῶν" (from all the firstfruits) as two alternative options, whereas the Hebrew presents a single continuous specification (contribution → its best → its sacred part) without disjunction. The Vulgate adds "ex decimis" ("from the tithes"), an explicit term not present in this Hebrew clause, making the tithe-connection explicit where the Hebrew text here uses only mattenotei ("gifts") without the specific term for tithe.