Exodus 30:20

Summary

This verse specifies when priests must wash with water: before entering the Tent of Meeting, or before approaching the altar to serve and to burn a fire offering to Yehovah. Failure to wash carries the consequence of death, expressed with the negated verb yamutu ("they will die", H4191).

Key words

• bo'am ("their coming/entering", H0935G) — qal infinitive construct with 3rd person masculine plural suffix, meaning "when they enter"; sets up the first temporal condition.
• yirchatzu ("they will wash", H7364) — qal imperfect, expressing an obligatory or repeated future action; the main verb of the sentence.
• yamutu ("they will die", H4191) — qal imperfect negated by lo' ("not", H3808), stating the consequence of not washing.
• gishtam ("their drawing near", H5066G) — qal infinitive construct with suffix, parallel to bo'am, introducing the second temporal condition (approaching the altar).
• haqtir ("to make smoke", H6999A) — hiphil infinitive, causative form indicating the act of causing something to go up in smoke, here applied to the 'isheh ("fire offering", H0801).

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built on two parallel temporal clauses, each introduced by a preposition plus infinitive construct with a pronominal suffix: be-vo'am ("in their entering") and o be-gishtam ("or in their drawing near"). Both clauses share the same governing verb, yirchatzu ("they will wash"), which appears only once, before the first condition, but applies to both. This construction ties washing to two distinct ritual moments — entry into the Tent of Meeting and approach to the altar — without repeating the verb for each.

The purpose clause attached to the second condition uses two piled infinitives, le-sharet ("to serve", H8334, piel) and le-haqtir ("to make smoke", H6999A, hiphil), showing a sequence of purpose: approaching the altar is "to serve," and serving specifically means "to cause a fire offering to go up in smoke" for Yehovah. The piel and hiphil stems mark intensive/purposive and causative nuances respectively, distinctions not visible in translations that render both simply as "to serve" or "to burn."

Differences between versions

The LXX renders le-haqtir 'isheh ("to make smoke a fire offering") as ἀναφέρειν τὰ ὁλοκαυτώματα ("to offer up the whole burnt offerings"), specifying a particular offering type (holokautōma) not explicit in the Hebrew 'isheh ("fire offering", H0801), which is a broader term. The Vulgate renders the same phrase as offerant... thymiama ("that they may offer incense"), narrowing the offering further to incense specifically, and its provided text omits the clause ve-lo' yamutu ("and they will not die") found in the Hebrew and LXX.