Exodus 40:12

Summary

Exodus 40:12 instructs that Aaron and his sons are to be brought to the entrance of the tent of meeting, and there washed with water. The verse is phrased as a continuing sequence of actions addressed to a second-person singular "you," presumably Moses, following the pattern of prior instructions in the chapter.

Key words

• hik.rav.Ta ("you will bring near", H7126H) — hiphil (causative) sequential perfect: the causative stem marks that the subject makes Aaron and his sons approach, rather than they approaching on their own.
• 'a.ha.Ron ("Aaron", H175) — proper name, marked by the direct object marker 'et (H853) as the one being brought near.
• ba.Na ("sons", H1121A) — masculine plural construct with pronominal suffix -o ("his"), forming "his sons," joined to Aaron by the conjunction ve (H9002).
• mo.'Ed ("meeting", H4150I) — completes the construct chain Pe.tach ("entrance of", H6607) + 'O.hel ("tent of", H168G) + mo.'Ed, i.e., "entrance of the tent of meeting."
• ra.chatz.Ta ("you will wash", H7364) — qal sequential perfect, continuing the same verbal chain as hik.rav.Ta, indicating the next action in the sequence performed by the same addressee.

What the text says

The verse is built on two sequential perfect verbs, hik.rav.Ta ("you will bring near") and ra.chatz.Ta ("you will wash"), both directed at a singular "you." This grammatical form links the verse to the surrounding instructions as part of a continuous chain of commands rather than an isolated statement. The hiphil stem of hik.rav.Ta indicates that the subject performs the action of bringing Aaron and his sons near, rather than describing their own movement — the causation lies with the addressee, not with Aaron.

The phrase Pe.tach 'O.hel mo.'Ed ("entrance of the tent of meeting") is a triple construct chain, each noun modifying the next, producing a single compound location. The object markers 'et before "Aaron" and "sons," and again as 'o.Tam ("them") before "water," mark the direct objects of the two verbs without being translated themselves — they function purely grammatically. The final clause, "wash them with water" (ba.Ma.yim, "with the water," H4325G, with definite article), specifies the means of washing using a preposition-plus-article construction.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew text specifies bringing Aaron and his sons to the entrance of the tent of meeting and washing them with water. The Vulgate (Applicabisque Aaron et filios ejus ad fores tabernaculi testimonii, et lotos aqua) and the Spanish/English translations (RV1909, SBLIBRE, BSB) render this content closely, following the same two-part sequence: bringing near, then washing. The LXX segment provided (καὶ τοὺς υἱοὺς αὐτοῦ προσάξεις, καὶ ἐνδύσεις αὖ. τοὺς χιτῶνας — "and you will bring near his sons, and you will clothe [them in] tunics") does not correspond to the same content as the Hebrew given here: it mentions bringing the sons near and clothing them in tunics, but does not mention the entrance of the tent of meeting or washing with water. This suggests the LXX verse numbering in Exodus 40 does not align verse-by-verse with the Hebrew text at this point.