Exodus 34:3

Summary

Exodus 34:3 gives instructions restricting access to the mountain during the second giving of the tablets: no person may accompany Moses upward, no one may even be seen anywhere on the mountain, and no flocks or herds may graze in front of it.

Key words

• ya'aleh ("he will go up", H5927G) — qal imperfect, describing the prohibited act of ascending the mountain with Moses.
• yera' ("he be seen", H7200G) — niphal jussive; the passive/reflexive form shifts focus from an agent seeing to the state of "being seen," reinforcing the prohibition on presence rather than action.
• khol ("all", H3605) — construct form governing ha-har ("the mountain"), producing the phrase "all of the mountain," emphasizing totality of the restricted area.
• yir'u ("they graze", H7462B) — qal jussive plural, applied to the animals (ha-tzon, "the sheep," H6629G, and ha-baqar, "the cattle," H1241), extending the prohibition beyond humans to livestock.
• mul ("front of", H4136) — construct noun indicating spatial proximity, restricting grazing specifically to the area facing the mountain.

What the text says

The verse is built from three parallel prohibitions, each using a different negation and verb form. The first clause uses lo' ("not", H3808) with the imperfect ya'aleh, a straightforward negated future/ongoing action referring to Moses's companions not ascending. The second clause shifts to 'al ("may not", H0408) with the jussive yera' in the niphal stem — a passive construction meaning literally "let him not be seen," which grammatically removes the subject as an active agent and instead frames the prohibition as a state of non-visibility across "all the mountain" (bekhol-ha-har).

The third prohibition again uses 'al with the jussive yir'u, this time plural, governing both ha-tzon and ha-baqar. The construct phrase 'el-mul har ha-hu' ("to the front of that mountain") specifies the grazing restriction is tied to spatial orientation toward the mountain, marked by the demonstrative hu' ("that", H1931), which points back to the specific mountain already mentioned in context. The repeated use of gam ("also", H1571) links the three prohibitions as a cumulative escalation: not even a second person, not even mere presence, not even animals.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the niphal jussive yera' with the passive imperative ὀφθήτω ("let him be seen"), matching the Hebrew's passive construction. The Vulgate uses videatur quispiam ("let anyone be seen"), also passive, aligning with the Hebrew niphal. No substantial divergence in meaning is present among the Hebrew, LXX, and Vulgate for this verse; the versions differ mainly in syntactic ordering, not in content.