Exodus 4:27

Summary

Yehovah instructs Aaron to go into the wilderness to meet Moses. The narrative then reports that Aaron went, met Moses at "the mountain of God," and kissed him.

Key words

• ha-midbarah ("the wilderness" + directional, H4057B + H9011): the noun midbar takes the suffixed directional he, marking motion "toward the wilderness" without needing a separate preposition.
• liqrat ("to meet", H7122G): infinitive construct with prefixed le, expressing purpose — "in order to meet."
• vayyifgeshehu ("and he met him", H6298): narrative vayyiqtol form with 3rd person masculine singular pronominal suffix hu ("him") attached directly to the verb, fusing subject-action-object in one word.
• har ha-Elohim ("mountain of the God/gods", H2022G + H0430G): har stands in construct form before ha-Elohim, meaning "mountain of God" — Elohim itself has plural morphology though used with singular reference here.
• vayyishaq-lo ("and he kissed to-him", H5401A + H9033): the verb nashaq ("to kiss") is followed by the preposition le plus suffix, a construction meaning "he kissed him" (literally "kissed to him").

What the text says

The verse is built from a chain of narrative vayyiqtol verbs (vayyomer, vayyelekh, vayyifgeshehu, vayyishaq), each meaning "and then he [verb]," creating a tight sequential chain: Yehovah spoke → Aaron went → he met [Moses] → he kissed [him]. The subject of each verb after the first is not explicitly named again — the reader must track that "he" refers to Aaron throughout, since Aaron is the addressee of Yehovah's command in the first clause.

The directional he suffixed to midbar ("wilderness") functions as a built-in "toward," so the Hebrew does not need a separate preposition of motion — this is a feature not visible in translations that render it simply as "into the wilderness" or "to the wilderness" using their own prepositions. The verb nashaq ("kiss") is followed by the preposition le with a pronominal suffix rather than a direct object marker, a common syntactic pattern for this verb in Biblical Hebrew.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew text describes a one-directional action: vayyishaq-lo, "and he kissed him" — Aaron kissing Moses, with Moses not stated as reciprocating. The LXX renders this same moment as κατεφίλησαν ἀλλήλους, "they kissed each other," using a plural verb with reciprocal pronoun, describing mutual action rather than a single actor kissing another. The Vulgate follows the Hebrew structure more closely with osculatus est eum, "he kissed him," preserving the one-directional sense.