Exodus 29:43

Summary

The verse describes YHWH's promise to meet the people of Israel (bnei Yisra'el, H1121G/H3478) at a specific location, and states that this place will be sanctified by divine glory (kavod, H3519). Both main verbs are niphal forms, giving the sentence a passive or reflexive quality distinct from a simple active statement.

Key words

• no'adti ("I will meet", H3259) — niphal perfect, 1st person common singular. The niphal stem here carries a reciprocal/reflexive sense: not merely "I will command" but "I will present myself to be met."
• Shammah ("there", H8033G) — adverb with a directional he (H9011) suffixed, marking motion toward or presence at a specific place, rather than simple location.
• bnei ("people/sons of", H1121G) — masculine plural construct, syntactically bound to Yisra'el, forming the fixed phrase "the people of Israel."
• niqdash ("it will be shown as holy", H6942G) — niphal sequential perfect, 3rd masculine singular. Niphal again signals a passive process: the subject (the place, implied) becomes holy rather than actively sanctifying itself.
• khvodi ("my glory", H3519 + H9020) — noun in construct form with a 1st person suffix, "glory of me," governed by the preposition bi ("by/in", H9003).

What the text says

The sentence is built from two clauses joined by narrative vav (H9001), each carrying a niphal sequential perfect verb. This grammatical choice is significant: both no'adti and niqdash are niphal, meaning the text frames divine meeting and sanctification as events that happen to or through the subject, rather than as direct transitive actions performed on an object. The first clause names the recipients explicitly — livnei Yisra'el, "to the people of Israel" — using the preposition li (H9005) attached to the construct phrase. The directional he on shammah reinforces that this meeting is tied to a specific, previously established location. The second clause shifts to the mechanism of sanctification: bikhvodi, "by my glory," using the construct noun kavod with a possessive suffix, indicating the agency or means by which the sanctifying process occurs, without stating an explicit direct object for what becomes holy.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders no'adti as τάξομαι ("I will appoint/arrange"), diverging from the niphal "meet" sense of the Hebrew. The Vulgate uses praecipiam ("I will command") for the same verb, an even further departure, and additionally inserts altare ("altar") as the explicit subject of sanctification — a noun absent from the Hebrew, where the sanctified subject is left grammatically implicit. The RV1909 renders no'adti as "testificaré" ("I will testify"), also diverging from a meeting sense, while BSB and SBLIBRE ("meet with," "me encontraré") align more closely with the niphal's reciprocal nuance.