Leviticus 9:1

Summary

The verse marks a temporal transition — "the eighth day" — and reports that Moses summoned Aaron, his sons, and the elders of Israel. It functions as a narrative bridge introducing a new scene following the seven days of ordination described in the preceding chapter.

Key words

• va-yehi ("and it was", H9001+H1961) — the narrative vav prefixed to the qal verb "to be" is the standard formula opening a new narrative unit, often untranslated in English but signaling sequence ("and then it happened that...").
• ba-yom ("in/on the day", H9003+H3117G) — preposition plus noun, anchoring the action in a specific temporal point in the text's timeline.
• ha-sheminí ("the eighth", H8066) — an ordinal number with the definite article, specifying which day within the sequence began in Leviticus 8.
• qara ("he summoned/called", H7121G) — qal perfect, indicating a completed single action performed by Moses; the same root is used elsewhere for divine calling but here has Moses as subject.
• ziqnei ("elders of", H2205G) — masculine plural construct form, meaning it must be followed by a genitive ("elders of Israel"); construct state links the two nouns into one phrase.

What the text says

The verse opens with the narrative formula va-yehi ("and it was"), a common device in Biblical Hebrew narrative to signal the start of a new episode without necessarily indicating strict temporal causation with what precedes. The phrase ba-yom ha-sheminí ("on the eighth day") specifies the day, using the definite article on the ordinal "eighth" to indicate a day already established as a reference point in the surrounding narrative context.

The main clause is built around the qal perfect verb qara ("he summoned"), with Moses as the explicit subject. The three groups summoned — Aaron, "his sons" (banav, from the construct banai plus the third-person suffix va, "sons of him"), and "the elders of Israel" (ziqnei Yisra'el) — are joined by the coordinating conjunction u ("and") preceding each group with the preposition le ("to"), a common Hebrew pattern for listing the recipients or objects of a summons. The construct form ziqnei ("elders of") cannot stand alone grammatically; it requires the following noun Yisra'el to complete its meaning, producing "elders of Israel" as a single semantic unit.

Differences between versions

The Vulgate adds dixitque ad Aaron ("and he said to Aaron"), a phrase not present in the Hebrew text of this verse, anticipating the direct speech that follows in the subsequent verse. The LXX renders ziqnei Yisra'el ("elders of Israel") as τὴν γερουσίαν Ἰσραήλ ("the council/senate of Israel"), using a term for a formal governing body rather than a literal rendering of "elders."