Exodus 40:32

Summary

The verse describes a recurring practice: whenever Aaron and his sons entered the Tent of Meeting or approached the altar, they washed themselves, in accordance with the command Yehovah had given to Moses. The sentence structures two conditional temporal clauses followed by the main action and a closing formula of compliance.

Key words

• vo.'A ("went/entering", H0935G) — qal infinitive construct with 3mp suffix (-am, "their"), forming "in their entering," establishing the first temporal condition.
• ka.re.va.Ta ("drew near", H7126G) — qal infinitive construct with 3mp suffix, parallel in form to vo.'A, forming "in their drawing near," the second temporal condition.
• yir.Cha.tzu ("they washed", H7364) — qal imperfect, 3mp. The imperfect aspect conveys habitual or repeated action rather than a single completed event.
• tzi.Vah ("he had commanded", H6680) — piel perfect, 3ms. The piel stem intensifies the verbal action ("commanded" as a formal, official act), and the perfect aspect marks it as prior and completed relative to the washing.
• 'a.Sher ("as/that", H0834D) — relative particle introducing the comparative clause that ties the action to the prior divine instruction.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built on two parallel infinitive-construct clauses, each governed by the preposition be- ("in/when"): be-vo'am ("in their entering") and u-ve-korvatam ("and in their drawing near"). Both carry the same 3rd person masculine plural suffix (-am, H9048), referring to the priests, and both are morphologically identical in construction (infinitive + suffix), creating a balanced, rhythmic pair of temporal clauses. This grammatical parallelism links the two actions — entering the tent and approaching the altar — as equally triggering the same washing requirement.

The main verb, yir.Chatzu ("they washed", H7364), is an imperfect form, which in this narrative context expresses habitual or repeated action: not a one-time washing but a standing practice performed every time the two conditions occur. The verse closes with the formula ka'asher tzivah Yehovah et-Mosheh ("as Yehovah had commanded Moses"), using the piel perfect tzi.Vah (H6680) to mark the command as a completed prior act that governs the ongoing practice described by the imperfect verb. The direct object marker 'et (H0853) before "Moses" is grammatically required but has no independent lexical meaning.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew text of Exodus 40:32 concerns the washing practice of the priests at the Tent of Meeting and altar. The Latin Vulgate text supplied ("the cloud covered the tabernacle of the testimony, and the glory of the Lord filled it") and the Greek Septuagint text supplied (concerning the cloud and fire visible to Israel during their journeys) do not correspond to this Hebrew content — they reflect material found elsewhere in Exodus 40 (verses 34–36), not verse 32. The Spanish and English translations (RV1909, BSB, SBLIBRE) align closely with the Hebrew verse as given, rendering both temporal clauses and the concluding compliance formula consistently.