Numbers 28:25

Summary

Numbers 28:25 establishes that the seventh day of a festival period is designated as a holy assembly, during which all "work of servitude" is prohibited. The verse uses two construct chains to express the concepts of "holy convocation" and "servile labor."

Key words

• mikra ("convocation of", H4744) — a masculine singular noun in construct state, meaning it must be joined to the following word to complete its meaning; it does not stand alone as "a convocation" but as "a convocation OF [something]."
• qodesh ("holiness", H6944G) — the noun completing the construct chain begun by mikra; together mikra-qodesh functions as "convocation of holiness," a construct pairing rather than a noun-plus-adjective structure.
• yihyeh ("it will be", H1961) — qal imperfect, third person masculine singular; the imperfect aspect marks this as an ongoing or future-oriented state, not a single completed event.
• meleket ("work of", H4399) — feminine singular noun in construct state, requiring the following noun to specify what kind of work is meant.
• avodah ("servitude", H5656I) — feminine singular noun completing the construct chain meleket avodah, "work of servitude," specifying the category of labor prohibited.
• ta'asu ("you will do", H6213A) — qal imperfect, second person masculine plural; paired with the negation lo ("not", H3808), it forms a prohibition addressed to a plural group.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built on two construct chains, a grammatical feature where one noun modifies another by direct juxtaposition rather than through an adjective. The first, mikra-qodesh ("convocation of holiness"), functions where English or Greek might use "holy convocation," but the Hebrew literally links "convocation" to "holiness" as two nouns in a genitive-like relationship. The second construct chain, kol-meleket avodah ("all work of servitude"), similarly links "work" to "servitude" rather than using an adjective like "servile."

The verb yihyeh ("it will be") is imperfect, indicating a state that holds for the day in a general or recurring sense, appropriate to a calendrical instruction rather than a one-time announcement. The final clause, lo ta'asu ("you will not do"), uses the negation lo with an imperfect verb, a common construction for durative prohibitions in legal or ritual instruction, addressed to a plural "you" (the community).

Differences between versions

The Septuagint renders mikra-qodesh as κλητὴ ἁγία ("called, holy"), using two adjectives modifying "day" rather than the Hebrew's construct-noun structure. The Vulgate expands further with "celeberrimus et sanctus" ("most celebrated and holy"), introducing a superlative sense of festivity not present in the Hebrew wording. Both the LXX (ἐν αὐτῇ, "in it") and the Vulgate (in eo, "in it") add an explicit reference to "the day" at the end of the prohibition on work, a phrase not present in the Hebrew clause lo ta'asu, which ends without a locative complement.