Exodus 28:41

Summary

Exodus 28:41 instructs Moses to dress Aaron and his sons in the priestly garments already described, then to anoint them, fill their hands, and consecrate them, so that they may function as priests. The verse is built as a chain of five commands in the same grammatical form, marking a continuous sequence of ritual actions.

Key words

• hilbashta ("you will clothe", H3847) — hiphil (causative) sequential perfect: "you will cause [them] to be clothed," continuing the instruction sequence begun earlier in the chapter.
• mashachta ("you will anoint", H4886) — qal sequential perfect, the second link in the chain of actions Moses is to perform.
• milleta ("you will fill", H4390) — piel sequential perfect, paired with yadam ("their hand", H3027) to form the idiom "fill their hand."
• kiddashta ("you will consecrate", H6942) — piel sequential perfect, intensifying the root meaning "to be set apart, holy."
• kihanu ("they will serve as priests", H3547) — piel sequential perfect, third person plural; a denominative verb built from the noun "priest" (kohen), meaning literally "they will act as priest."

What the text says

The verse consists of five verbs, all connected by the narrative vav (H9001) and all in the sequential perfect form: hilbashta, mashachta, milleta, kiddashta, and finally kihanu. This repeated grammatical pattern signals that the actions form one continuous procedure rather than separate, isolated commands — clothing, anointing, filling the hand, and consecrating are steps of a single ordination sequence directed at Moses ("you," second person masculine singular throughout, except the final verb).

The phrase milleta et-yadam, "you will fill their hand" (H4390 + H3027), is a Hebrew idiom that does not translate literally into a natural English or Latin equivalent; it refers to the act of installing someone into priestly office. The final verb, kihanu ("they will serve as priests", H3547), shifts the grammatical subject from Moses to "they" (Aaron and his sons), marking the outcome of the preceding actions: as a result of being clothed, anointed, hand-filled, and consecrated, they will function as priests li, "for me / to me" (H9005 + H9030), referring to the deity issuing the command.

The construct chain Aharon achikha ("Aaron, your brother", H0175 + H0251G) and banav ("his sons", H1121A) with the suffix "his" (H9023) clarifies that Aaron's sons are in view, not Moses's own.

Differences between versions

The Vulgate renders milleta et-yadam ("you will fill their hand") as "cunctorum consecrabis manus" ("you will consecrate the hands of all"), replacing the Hebrew idiom "to fill" with "to consecrate," a different verb than the one used later in the Hebrew for kiddashta. The BSB reorganizes the five sequential Hebrew commands into a subordinate temporal clause ("After you put... garments... anoint them, ordain them, and consecrate them"), converting the parallel chain of verbs into a hierarchical sentence structure not present in the Hebrew syntax. The final clause kihanu li ("they will serve as priests to me") appears in the SBLIBRE and BSB as a purpose clause ("so that they may serve me as priests"), whereas the Hebrew verb form is a statement of sequence/result rather than an explicit grammatical purpose construction.