2. beaten olive oil. “Beaten” (katit), from a verb that means “to smash” or “to pulverize,” suggests that the olives are to be pounded with a pestle rather than crushed in a press.

perpetually. The Hebrew tamid implies that the light is to be constantly renewed, not that it is to burn incessantly as an “eternal light.”

3. the curtain of the Covenant. The last word here is a prevalent ellipsis for “Ark of the Covenant.”

4. the pure gold lamp stand. As both Rashi and Abraham ibn Ezra note, the Hebrew phrase—literally, “the pure lamp stand”—is an ellipsis for “pure gold lamp stand.” The same is true of the phrase “pure [gold] table” in verse 6.

5. twelve loaves. This sanctified number of course reflects the number of the tribes of Israel, as does the number of stones in the breastplate of the high priest. The bread in question is the “bread of display” or “bread of the Presence” (King James Version, “shewbread”). Laying out bread on the altar daily, or even several times a day, with the idea of symbolically feeding the deity, was a widespread practice in ancient Near Eastern religions. Jacob Milgrom suggests that it was in order to distance this cherished cultic procedure from any notion of providing sustenance to God that this version of the law stipulates putting out fresh loaves only once a week. The inevitably stale bread could then be consumed by the priests (perhaps one of the less attractive of their sacerdotal perquisites).

7. clear frankincense. The adjective used, zakh, is the same one applied to olive oil in verse 1, and translations that render it as “pure” run the risk of introducing a confusion with the pure (tahor) gold lamp stand and table. Since frankincense is a resin, this might be an indication that it should be translucent, a visual attribute squarely within the semantic range of zakh.

a token offering for the bread, a fire offering. Since the bread itself is not consumed on the altar but is left untouched until the following sabbath, when it may be given to the priests, the frankincense, set alongside the bread, is burned as a “token offering” in lieu of the bread.

8. Sabbath day after sabbath day. The literal contour of the Hebrew idiom is “On the sabbath day, on the sabbath day.”

10. brawled. This verb of violent altercation is the same one used for the two Hebrew men whom the young Moses rebukes (Exodus 2:13). It is perhaps this verbal trigger that led Rashi to claim, rather fancifully, that the blasphemer in this episode was the son of the Egyptian taskmaster whom Moses killed on the day before his encounter with the two brawling Israelites.

11. invoked the Name, vilifying it. “The Name,” in an interesting biblical anticipation of later pious usage in Hebrew, is an ellipsis for “the Name of YHWH.” One suspects that the writer avoided using the complete phrase because the idea of actually invoking and vilifying God’s holy name was so abhorrent to him. The object of “vilifying” it (the Name), is merely implied. Though it might at first seem that the brawler is verbally abusing his adversary, supercharging the abusive language by introducing God’s sacrosanct name, verse 15 clearly makes “his God” the grammatical object of “vilify,” and this direct verbal assault on the name YHWH is of course a graver transgression.

Shelomith daughter of Dibri of the tribe of Dan. Mary Douglas ingeniously detects in these names a kind of allegorical play: Compensation (or Retribution) daughter of Law-suit from the tribe of Judgment.

12. until it should be made clear to them by the word of the LORD. What is to be made clear is what should be done with the malefactor. “By the word [literally, by the mouth] of the LORD” in the present context obviously refers to an oracle, and God’s speech to Moses in the following verses is the message of the oracle.

14. him who vilified. God, too, suppresses the divine object of the verb of scurrilous speech.

all who heard. That is, all who heard the blasphemous utterance.

shall lay their hands on his head. In biblical idiom, bloodguilt rests “on the head” of the perpetrator. The laying on of hands by the witnesses is the confirming of the guilt (and so Rashi observes).

16. for his invoking the Name he shall be put to death. The element of the idiom that sticks in the craw of the pious writer, “and vilifying it,” is merely implied. This act of lèse-majesté aimed at God, Who is the very rationale for the existence of the community, is understood to be a threat to the community itself, and so all are to be involved in the execution. In any case, this formulation, which appears to hold the mere invoking of the Name as a sin, led later on to a general ban against pronouncing the name YHWH except by the high priest on the Day of Atonement in the Holy of Holies.

17. And should a man mortally strike down any human being. The use of the generic term ʾadam, “human being,” sets up the contradistinction of killing a domestic animal rather than a human being. But there may also be an implied contrast with God in the preceding unit. God in principle cannot be hurt by any human act, but His name, available for manipulation and debasement in human linguistic practice, can suffer injury, and for this injury the death penalty is exacted, as here in the case of murder.

18. shall pay for it, life for life. Since what is explicitly stated is providing restitution to the owner of the animal that has been killed, “life for life” here clearly means the monetary value of the dead creature that will enable its owner to acquire another one. Although the rabbis strenuously sought to extend this notion of monetary compensation to all the cases of lex talionis that follow here, the plain language of the text appears to call for an actual infliction of injury for injury, as Milgrom plausibly concludes after an exhaustive survey of the age-old interpretive debate. The formulation of the lex talionis in Exodus 21:23–25 may leave a bit more latitude for the possibility of monetary compensation because there is no verb for the act of maiming like what is used here, “as he has maimed a human being so shall he be maimed.” See the comment on Exodus 21:23–25.