Exodus 30:21

Summary

The verse establishes a washing procedure (hands and feet) as a condition to avoid death, and formalizes this practice as a permanent legal statute binding on the priesthood and their descendants across all generations.

Key words

• ra.cha.Tzu ("they will wash", H7364) — qal sequential perfect, continuing a chain of prior instructions; the subject (they, masculine) refers back to priests mentioned earlier in context.
• ya.Mu.tu ("they will die", H4191) — qal imperfect, marking a future/ongoing consequence; preceded by lo' ("not", H3808), forming a negative purpose or result clause.
• ha.ye.Tah ("it will be", H1961) — qal sequential perfect, feminine subject (agreeing with chok, "decree"), continuing the narrative chain begun by the previous verbs.
• chok ("a decree of", H2706G) — masculine singular construct noun, grammatically linked to o.Lam ("perpetuity", H5769G), forming the construct phrase "decree of perpetuity."
• do.ro.Ta.m ("generations their", H1755 + H9028) — feminine plural construct noun with pronominal suffix, closing the verse with a temporal scope extending across successive generations.

What the text says

The verse is built as a chain of three sequential perfect verbs (ra.cha.Tzu, and later ha.ye.Tah) linked by the narrative vav (H9001/H9002), a common construction in legal/procedural Hebrew that presents successive actions or consequences as part of one continuous instruction. The first clause, "ve.rachatzu yedeihem ve.ragleihem" ("and they will wash their hands and their feet"), uses two construct-suffix noun pairs — ye.dei.Hem ("hands their", H3027G+H9028) and rag.lei.Hem ("feet their", H7272+H9028) — both dual forms, since hands and feet are naturally paired body parts in Hebrew grammar.

The clause ve.lo' ya.Mu.tu ("and they will not die") uses the imperfect form of muth ("to die", H4191), which can denote future or habitual action; here it expresses a general consequence tied to the washing action, without a distinct Hebrew word for "so that" — the vav conjunction alone carries the logical link between washing and avoiding death.

The final clause introduces chok- o.Lam ("a decree of perpetuity", H2706G + H5769G), a construct chain meaning literally "decree of forever" — a construction that in Hebrew law-language marks an enactment intended to have no expiration date. This decree is then distributed via the prepositions lo ("for him", H9033) and le.zar.'o ("for his offspring", H2233H+H9023) and extended le.do.ro.Ta.m ("to their generations", H1755+H9028), stacking three layers of continuity: the individual, his descendants, and their successive generations.

Differences between versions

The LXX adds a temporal clause absent in the Hebrew — "ὅταν εἰσπορεύωνται εἰς τὴν σκηνὴν τοῦ μαρτυρίου" ("whenever they enter the tabernacle of testimony") — before repeating the verb "they shall wash," a specification not present in the Hebrew text at this verse. The Vulgate renders chok- o.Lam as "legitimum sempiternum" ("an everlasting statute"), paralleling the Hebrew construct closely, while the LXX uses "νόμιμον αἰώνιον" ("eternal ordinance"), a similar rendering. The Hebrew text does not explicitly name "Aaron" here, referring only to lo ("for him") and zar.'o ("his offspring"); the BSB translation supplies "Aaron and his descendants" as an interpretive addition not present in the Hebrew wording of this verse.