Exodus 33:8

Summary

The verse describes a habitual scene: whenever Moses went out to the tent, the people would rise, each one stand at the entrance of his own tent, and watch after Moses until he entered the tent. The construction marks this as a repeated, customary action rather than a single event.

Key words

• ha.Yah ("it was", H1961) — sequential perfect opening the clause; combined with the following ke + infinitive, it sets up a frequentative ("and it used to happen that...") rather than a one-time narrative event.
• Tzet ("went out", H3318G) — infinitive construct governed by ke ("when"); infinitives with this preposition mark the temporal trigger for the recurring action.
• ya.Kumu ("they arose", H6965B) — imperfect (not a vav-consecutive form here), reinforcing the durative/repeated sense: "they would arise" each time.
• Ni.tze.Vu ("they stood", H5324) — niphal sequential perfect; the niphal stem here denotes the people taking up a standing position, continuing the chain of habitual actions.
• hi.Bi.tu ("they looked", H5027) — hiphil sequential perfect of a verb of gazing/watching; the causative-form verb describes sustained visual attention, "they kept watching."

What the text says

The sentence opens with ve.haYah ("and it was") followed by ke ("when") plus the infinitive Tzet ("going out") — a standard Hebrew pattern for expressing "whenever X happened." This is confirmed by the shift to imperfect in yaKumu ("they would arise"), which in this frequentative frame indicates repeated rather than single action. The narrative then continues with two sequential perfects, nitzevu ("they stood") and hibbitu ("they looked"), each person ('ish, "everyone/each man", H0376I) positioned at the petach ("opening of", H6607, construct) his own ohel ("tent", H0168G) — the construct chain petach 'oholo literally "the opening of his tent." The people's gaze is directed acharei Mosheh ("after Moses", H0310A construct plural), a term meaning "behind/following," used here for watching someone depart, until ('ad, H5704) his bo' ("going/entering", H0935G, infinitive) ha'ohelah — "tent-ward," marked by the directional he (H9011) attached to ha'ohel, indicating motion toward the tent.

Differences between versions

The LXX adds a phrase not present in the Hebrew: "ἔξω τῆς παρεμβολῆς" ("outside the camp"), specifying a location the Hebrew text does not state. Where the Hebrew has acharei Mosheh ("after Moses"), the LXX renders it with a genitive absolute, "ἀπιόντος Mωσῆ" ("as Moses was departing"), while the Vulgate renders the same phrase concretely as "tergum Moysi" ("the back of Moses"), making explicit a physical sense ("his back") that the Hebrew acharei leaves unspecified. The LXX also renders nitzevu with a pluperfect "ἱστήκει" (singular verb with collective "πᾶς ὁ λαός"), differing grammatically from the Hebrew's plural niphal nitzevu.