Numbers 15:23

Summary

This verse continues the description of the offering-and-atonement instructions from the preceding verses, specifying their scope: everything Yehovah commanded through Moses, valid from the day of that command onward, for all generations. The verse contains a temporal/legal formula marking the perpetual applicability of the commandments already mentioned.

Key words

• 'asher ("that/who", H0834A) — relative particle, used twice, introducing first the content of the command ("all that Yehovah commanded") and then the temporal clause ("the day that Yehovah commanded").
• tzivvah ("he has commanded" / "he commanded", H6680) — piel perfect, appearing twice; the piel stem carries an intensive nuance ("to charge, ordain"), and the perfect aspect marks the command as a completed, established act.
• be-yad ("by [the] hand of", H9003+H3027J) — preposition plus construct noun, a fixed idiom meaning "through the agency of," here linking the command to Moses as intermediary.
• min-hayyom ("from the day", H4480A+H9009+H3117G) — preposition plus definite article plus noun, opening the temporal clause that fixes the starting point of the command's validity.
• le-dorotekhem ("to your generations", H9005+H1755+H9026) — preposition plus construct plural noun plus 2nd person plural suffix, extending the command's force beyond the immediate audience to all future generations.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built around a double occurrence of tzivvah ("he commanded", H6680) with Yehovah (H3068G) as subject each time. The first occurrence governs the object clause introduced by 'et kol-'asher ("all that", H0853+H3605+H0834A) — the totality of what was commanded — and specifies the means of transmission, be-yad-Mosheh ("by the hand of Moses", H9003+H3027J+H4872). The second occurrence of tzivvah reopens with the relative 'asher to anchor a temporal clause: "from the day that Yehovah commanded and onward." This repetition creates a chiastic emphasis on the divine origin of the instruction rather than a redundancy — the command is named once as content, once as a temporal marker.

The final phrase, va-hal'ah le-dorotekhem ("and onward, to your generations", H1973+H1755+H9026), uses a construct chain with a pronominal suffix to project the command's applicability into an open-ended future, without specifying an end point.

Differences between versions

The Vulgate renders the second instance of tzivvah not as a repetition of "commanded" but as coepit iubere ("began to command"), differing from the Hebrew's identical repeated verb form and from the LXX, which repeats κύριος πρὸς ὑμᾶς twice, paralleling the Hebrew's double structure. The Vulgate also uses the pronoun per eum ("through him") rather than repeating the name Moses, where the Hebrew explicitly states Mosheh (H4872).