Exodus 28:35

Summary

The verse establishes that the sound of Aaron's garment must be audible when he moves in and out of the holy place before Yehovah. The consequence clause states that this audibility is tied to Aaron not dying. The sentence is built as a chain of sequential perfects describing ongoing ritual requirement.

Key words

• ha.Yah ("it will be", H1961) — qal sequential perfect; continues the narrative chain from the preceding verses about the robe's construction, shifting into stated consequence/requirement.
• sha.Ret ("serve", H8334) — piel infinitive; the intensive stem marks priestly service as a specific, dedicated action, not ordinary "serving."
• nish.Ma' ("it will be heard", H8085) — niphal sequential perfect; the passive/reflexive stem makes the "sound" (qol) the grammatical subject that undergoes hearing, rather than naming who hears it.
• vo.' ("goes", H0935) with suffix -o ("his") — qal infinitive construct; paired with the preposition be- ("when"), forms the temporal clause "when he goes."
• tze.T ("comes out", H3318) with suffix -o — qal infinitive construct; mirrors vo.' structurally, forming the parallel temporal clause "when he comes out."

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence opens with ve-hayah ("and it will be"), a sequential perfect that in legal/ritual instruction typically signals a stated requirement or consequence rather than simple narrative past. The clause "al-Aharon le-sharet" places the robe's function "upon Aaron" specifically "for serving" (le-sharet), using the piel infinitive to mark priestly ministry as its purpose.

The next clause, "ve-nishma qolo" ("and his sound will be heard"), uses the niphal stem so that "sound" (qol, H6963, construct with suffix "its/his") is the subject of a passive verb — the text does not specify an agent who hears it, only that the sound occurs audibly. This is temporally anchored by two parallel infinitive-construct clauses: "be-vo'o el-ha-qodesh" ("in his coming into the holy place") and "u-ve-tze'to" ("and in his going out"), both built on the pattern preposition + infinitive + pronominal suffix "his." This grammatical parallelism (vo'o / tze'to) frames entry and exit as a matched pair of moments during which the sound is required.

The final clause, "ve-lo yamut" ("and he will not die"), uses a qal imperfect with negation, indicating an ongoing or future-oriented state rather than a single past event — grammatically an open-ended prohibition/consequence rather than a narrated single incident.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew text of this verse concerns the audible sound (qol) accompanying Aaron's entry and exit from the holy place. The LXX text supplied here (Swete edition) instead describes tassels on tunics, a linen mitre, and a girdle — content that does not correspond to this Hebrew verse's subject matter, suggesting the LXX excerpt given aligns with a different portion of the garment instructions (compare Exodus 28:39–40 material). The Vulgate ("ut audiatur sonitus") and the modern translations (BSB, RV1909, SBLIBRE) all follow the Hebrew's sense of an audible sound tied to entering/exiting the sanctuary "before the Lord," though SBLIBRE specifies "campanitas" (little bells) — an interpretive addition not present as a distinct lexical item in the Hebrew word list, which uses only qol ("sound").