What Does Exodus 23:14 Mean?
Three times in the year you shall keep a feast to me.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
Three times thou shalt keep a feast unto me in the year.THE KEY
The Hebrew calls these observances “three feet,” so the year’s feasts are not only dates but a path of return.
THE MEANING
Your year has three appointed returns, each oriented “unto me.” The feast makes time relational: the calendar holds recurring moments of gathering and celebration.
THE ROOT
רְגָלִים
regalim
GROWS FROM
רגל
ragal
Foot or leg.
“times” in this verse is regalim. The Hebrew phrase literally names “three feet,” the established expression for the three pilgrimage festivals. What KJV renders as occasions in time also carries a path the body takes: each feast is a return made by moving toward God.
ALSO GROWS
regel: Foot or leg.
רֶגֶל
The root begins with the body’s foot, making movement part of the image behind the appointed times.
regalim: Feet; by convention, the three pilgrimage festivals.
רְגָלִים
This is the verse’s phrase for the three yearly occasions, preserving travel and approach inside what KJV renders as “times.”
תָּחֹג
tachog
GROWS FROM
חגג
chagag
To celebrate or keep a festival.
The verb translated “keep a feast” shares its root with the festival noun and a word for a festal offering. The Hebrew gathers celebration, pilgrimage, and offering into a recurring act.
ALSO GROWS
chag: A feast or festival.
חַג
The noun names the celebration enacted by the verb, showing that the yearly observance is a recurring feast.
chagigah: A festal sacrifice or offering.
חֲגִיגָה
This related festival word shows celebration taking tangible form as something presented.
THE PATTERN
The year becomes a repeated path of gathering before God.
Three times in the year all your males shall appear before the face of the Lord, the LORD.Three times in a year all your males shall be seen before the face of the LORD your God in the place he will choose, at the feast of unsoured bread, at the feast of weeks, and at the feast of booths. They shall not be seen before the face of the LORD empty.Now the feast of the tents of the Jews was near.THE THREAD
And this day will be for you a remembrance. You will keep it as a feast to the LORD throughout your generations, a statute for the ages.This verse uses the same feast word, linking the annual returns to a memorial kept through generations. The feast carries remembrance by giving it a recurring, embodied form.
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