Leviticus 16:4

Summary

Leviticus 16:4 lists the linen garments that a man (Aaron, per the broader context) must wear: tunic, undergarments, sash, and turban, all made of bad ("linen", H0906). The verse specifies these are bigdei-qodesh ("garments of holiness", H0899B/H6944G) and requires washing the body in water before putting them on.

Key words

• yil.Bash ("he will wear", H3847) — qal imperfect, describing a future/prescribed action; the same root reappears at the end as le.ve.Sha[m] ("he will put them on", H3847) in the sequential perfect, showing the narrative chain from washing to dressing.
• bad ("linen", H0906) — appears four times, each as a construct qualifier ("tunic of linen," "undergarments of linen," "sash of linen," "turban of linen"), marking material uniformity across all four garments.
• Ko.desh ("holiness", H6944G) — used twice, first modifying ke.to.net ("tunic of", H3801) as "tunic of holiness," then in the summary phrase bigdei-qodesh hem ("garments of holiness they [are]").
• Hem ("they", H1992) — personal pronoun functioning as a copula-like closing statement, summarizing the preceding list as a single category.
• ra.Chatz ("he will wash", H7364) — qal sequential perfect, marking the next required action in sequence after the garments are named, before dressing occurs.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence structure is a chain of four clauses, each naming a garment in construct form with bad ("linen", H0906), followed by a qal imperfect verb describing the action of putting it on or securing it (yilbash, "he will wear"; yihyu, "they will be"; yachgor, "he will gird"; yitznof, "he will wind"). This construct-noun-plus-verb pattern repeats four times, creating a list-like rhythm before the summary clause bigdei-qodesh hem ("garments of holiness they [are]", H0899B/H6944G/H1992), which uses the pronoun hem ("they") to close the enumeration as a single grammatical unit.

After this summary, the vav-consecutive verbs rachatz ("he will wash", H7364) and levesham ("he will put them on", H3847) shift into sequential perfect forms, marking a temporal sequence: washing precedes dressing. The suffix -am ("them", H9038) on the final verb refers back to the plural set of garments just listed, tying the washing action grammatically to the entire preceding list rather than to any single item.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders mikhnesei-vad ("undergarments of linen", H4370/H0906) as περισκελὲς λινοῦν ("linen breeches/thigh-covering"), a more anatomically specific term than the Hebrew construct phrase. The Vulgate renders the same phrase as feminalibus lineis, adding the gloss verenda celabit ("he will cover the private parts"), an interpretive expansion not present in the Hebrew or the LXX. The Hebrew closing pronoun hem ("they", H1992) is rendered in the LXX as ἐστιν ("is/are") and in the Vulgate as sunt ("are"), both functioning as copulas rather than independent pronouns.