Leviticus 10:6

Summary

Moses instructs Aaron, Eleazar, and Ithamar not to perform the customary mourning rites (uncovering the head, tearing garments) after the death of Nadab and Abihu, warning that doing so risks their own death and provokes anger against the whole community. Instead, the wider community of Israel is designated to mourn the burning that Yehovah has carried out.

Key words

• tif.Ra'u ("you let loose", H6544B) — qal jussive, second person masculine plural, negated by 'al ("may not", H0408); refers to the loosening/disheveling of the hair, a customary mourning gesture.
• tif.Ro.mu ("you must tear", H6533) — qal imperfect, second person masculine plural, negated by lo' ("not", H3808); denotes tearing of garments, another mourning practice.
• yik.Tzof ("he will be angry", H7107) — qal imperfect, third person masculine singular; the subject is not repeated in this clause but follows from the preceding context.
• se.re.Fah ("burning", H8316) — feminine singular noun with definite article ha ("the", H9009), referring back to the fire event.
• sa.Raf ("he has burned", H8313) — qal perfect, third person masculine singular, marking a completed action attributed to Yah.weh ("Yehovah", H3068G).

What the text says

The verse opens with the narrative va-yo'mer ("and he said", H0559/H9001) introducing direct speech from Moses to the three priests, whose names are joined by repeated u-le ("and to", H9002+H9005) constructions. The two prohibitions use two different negators paired with two different verb forms: 'al with the jussive tif.Ra'u for the hair, and lo' with the imperfect tif.Ro.mu for the garments — both grammatically forbidding future action but drawing on distinct negation patterns available in Biblical Hebrew for prohibition.

The consequence clause ve-lo' ta.Mu.tu ("and you will not die", H4191) is followed by ve-'al kol ha-'edah yik.tzof ("and against all the congregation he will be angry"), where the subject of yik.tzof is not overtly stated in this clause but is understood from the surrounding discourse about Yehovah's action. The final clause shifts subject to 'achei.khem kol beit Yisra'el ("your brothers, all the house of Israel", H0251G+H3605+H1004M+H3478), who are grammatically marked as the ones who yiv.Ku ("will weep for", H1058) the se.re.Fah ("burning", H8316) — a noun built from the same root as the verb sa.Raf ("he has burned", H8313), creating a wordplay between the event and its designation.

Differences between versions

The LXX rendering of the garment clause (τὰ ἱμάτια ὑμῶν οὐ) lacks an explicit verb, leaving the prohibition against tearing garments incomplete in the Greek text as given. Where the Hebrew has yik.tzof ("he will be angry"), the LXX uses the impersonal ἔσται ("it will be"), removing the explicit personal anger found in the Hebrew clause. The Vulgate similarly reworks this into an impersonal construction, oriatur indignatio ("lest indignation arise"), rather than attributing anger directly to a personal subject as the Hebrew imperfect verb does.