Leviticus 9:23

Summary

Moses and Aaron enter the tent of meeting, then come out to bless the people, and the glory of Yehovah appears to the whole assembly. The verse contains four sequential actions linked by narrative vav, marking the culmination of the inauguration ceremony of the sanctuary.

Key words

• va-yyaVo' ("he went", H0935G) — qal narrative form; though the subject includes both Moses and Aaron, the verb is singular (masculine), agreeing with the closer or primary subject, a common pattern in Biblical Hebrew when compound subjects follow the verb.
• 'Ohel mo'Ed ("tent of meeting", H0168G + H4150I) — construct chain naming the sanctuary structure where the two men enter.
• y'varakhu ("they blessed", H1288) — piel (intensive) stem, narrative form; the piel here conveys the formal, ritual act of pronouncing a blessing rather than a simple wish.
• yeRa' ("it appeared", H7200G) — niphal (passive) form of the root "to see"; the glory is not described as actively showing itself but as "being seen" — the grammatical subject is kevod-YHWH ("glory of Yehovah"), and the verb is singular masculine, agreeing with kavod.
• kevod-Yehovah ("glory of Yehovah", H3519 + H3068G) — construct chain; kavod ("glory") is bound to the divine name, marking it as a possessed/defining relationship ("the glory belonging to Yehovah").

What the text says

The verse is built as a chain of four narrative vav-consecutive clauses: entering (va-yyaVo'), exiting (va-yyetze'u), blessing (va-yvarakhu), and appearing (va-yyera'). This chain structure presents the events as a tight causal-temporal sequence — one action following directly upon the last — which is a hallmark of Biblical Hebrew narrative prose.

Grammatically notable is the number agreement in the first verb: va-yyaVo' ("he went") is singular even though its compound subject is "Moses and Aaron." This is a recognized feature in Hebrew syntax where a verb preceding or governing a compound subject may take the grammatical number of the nearer noun (here Moses) rather than a plural form, without implying that Aaron did not also enter.

The final clause uses the niphal form yeRa' ("it appeared"), a passive/reflexive stem indicating that the "glory of Yehovah" (kevod-Yehovah) is the one "seen" or "made visible" — the grammar frames the glory as the subject of the visual event, not the people as viewers. The double occurrence of kol-ha'Am ("all the people," H3605 + H9009 + H5971A) at the end underscores the collective scope of both the blessing and the appearing.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders va-yyera' kevod-Yehovah ("and the glory of Yehovah appeared") with a construction lacking an explicit verb in the Swete text as quoted (καὶ ἡ δόξα Κυρίου παντὶ τῷ λαῷ, "and the glory of the Lord [was/appeared] to all the people"), while the Hebrew and Vulgate (Apparuitque gloria Domini) both preserve an explicit verb of appearing.