Exodus 30:33

Summary

The verse sets a penalty clause: anyone who mixes a compound like the sacred anointing oil described earlier, or who applies it to someone outside the priestly context, is to be "cut off" from the community. The sentence uses two parallel conditional clauses joined by "and," each describing a prohibited action, followed by the consequence.

Key words

• 'ish ("anyone", H0376I) — masculine singular noun, functions as the generic subject introducing the legal case ("any person who...").
• yirqach ("he will mix", H7543) — qal imperfect, describing the first prohibited act: compounding a substance "like it" (referring to the sacred formula named earlier in the chapter).
• zar ("a stranger", H2114A) — masculine singular adjective, marking the person outside the permitted category onto whom the substance must not be placed.
• nikhrat ("he will be cut off", H3772I) — niphal (passive) sequential perfect, shifting from imperfect (ongoing/future condition) to a passive consequence: the subject undergoes the cutting-off rather than performing an action.
• me'ammav ("from his kinspeople", H5971A + suffix) — masculine plural noun in construct with a possessive suffix, specifying the group from which the offender is separated.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built as a double conditional: 'ish 'asher yirqach kamohu ("anyone who mixes like it") and va'asher yitten mimmennu 'al-zar ("and who puts from it on a stranger"), both introduced by the relative particle 'asher ("who", H0834A), which ties each clause back to the initial 'ish. The verb forms in these clauses are qal imperfects (yirqach, yitten), indicating potential or future action rather than a completed event — the law addresses any instance that might occur, not a specific past case.

The consequence clause shifts grammatical voice: nikhrat is niphal, a passive/reflexive stem, so the subject "is cut off" rather than someone cutting him off — the text does not specify an agent performing the separation. The sequential perfect form (veniphal) marks this as the narrative outcome following the two preceding conditions, a common construction linking case and consequence in this legal material. The phrase me'ammav uses a plural construct noun with possessive suffix ("his kinspeople"), locating the punishment as removal from a defined group rather than physical death, though the text itself does not clarify further what "cut off" entails.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders nikhrat ("he will be cut off", H3772I) with θήσεται ("he will be placed/set"), a notably different verb than the Hebrew niphal passive of "cutting off." The Hebrew zar ("a stranger", H2114A) is translated in the LXX as ἀλλογενεῖ ("one of another race/foreign-born") and in the Vulgate as alieno ("a foreigner/outsider"), while the SBLIBRE Spanish version interprets this as "alguien que no sea sacerdote" ("someone who is not a priest"), narrowing the general sense of "stranger" to a specific priestly-status category not explicit in the Hebrew term itself.