Exodus 40:14

Summary

The verse instructs that Aaron's sons be brought forward and clothed with tunics, continuing a sequence of ordination actions begun in the preceding verses. The Hebrew presents two consecutive commands directed to a single addressee (masculine singular "you").

Key words

baNav ("his sons", H1121A) — masculine plural construct noun with pronominal suffix, meaning "sons of him"; functions as the direct object of the first verb. takRiv ("you will bring near", H7126H) — hiphil (causative) imperfect, 2nd person masculine singular; expresses a commanded action, "cause to draw near." hilbashTa ("you will clothe", H3847) — hiphil sequential perfect, 2nd person masculine singular; the vav-consecutive form links this action as following the first in sequence ("and then you will clothe"). kutoNot ("tunics", H3801) — feminine plural noun, the garment placed on the sons, unmarked for definiteness. 'et (H0853, untranslated) — appears twice, marking "his sons" and "them" as definite direct objects; it has no independent meaning but signals grammatical function.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built on two verbs in sequence: takRiv ("you will bring near"), a hiphil imperfect, followed by hilbashTa ("you will clothe"), a hiphil perfect with vav-consecutive. This grammatical pattern — imperfect followed by consecutive perfect — is a standard way in Biblical Hebrew to chain two commanded or future actions in temporal or logical sequence: first the sons are brought forward, then they are clothed. Both verbs are causative (hiphil) forms, meaning the subject causes the action to happen to the object rather than performing it directly — "cause [them] to draw near" and "cause [them] to be clothed."

The object marker 'et appears before both "his sons" (word 2) and "them" (word 8), marking these as definite direct objects of their respective verbs, though the marker itself carries no lexical content in translation. The noun kutoNot ("tunics") lacks the object marker, appearing simply as the item placed on the sons, functioning as a second object of the clothing action.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew text of this verse concerns bringing Aaron's sons forward and clothing them in tunics. The Greek (LXXSWETE) and Latin (VULCLEM) texts given for this reference instead read "Moses did all that the Lord commanded him, so he did" (LXX) and "And Moses did all that the Lord had commanded" (Vulgate) — content that does not correspond to the Hebrew wording of this verse. This reflects differing verse divisions and ordering in Exodus 40 between the Masoretic tradition and the Greek/Latin textual traditions, rather than a translation of the same underlying clause.