Exodus 34:21-23

34:21 “On six days ¹  you may labor, but on the seventh day you must rest; ²  even at the time of plowing and of harvest ³  you are to rest. ⁴ 

34:22 “You must observe ⁵  the Feast of Weeks – the firstfruits of the harvest of wheat – and the Feast of Ingathering at the end ⁶  of the year. 34:23 At three times ⁷  in the year all your men ⁸  must appear before the Lord God, ⁹  the God of Israel.

[34:21]  ¹ tn This is an adverbial accusative of time.

[34:21]  ² tn Or “cease” (i.e., from the labors).

[34:21]  ³ sn See M. Dahood, “Vocative lamed in Exodus 2,4 and Merismus in 34,21,” Bib 62 (1981): 413-15.

[34:21]  ⁴ tn The imperfect tense expresses injunction or instruction.

[34:22]  ⁵ tn The imperfect tense means “you will do”; it is followed by the preposition with a suffix to express the ethical dative to stress the subject.

[34:22]  ⁶ tn The expression is “the turn of the year,” which is parallel to “the going out of the year,” and means the end of the agricultural season.

[34:23]  ⁹ tn “Three times” is an adverbial accusative.

[34:23]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “all your males.”

[34:23]  ¹¹ tn Here the divine name reads in Hebrew הָאָדֹן יְהוָה (ha’adon yÿhvah), which if rendered according to the traditional scheme of “Lord” for “Yahweh” would result in “Lord Lord.” A number of English versions therefore render this phrase “Lord God,” and that convention has been followed here.