Numbers 18:1

Summary

Yehovah addresses Aaron, stating that he, his sons, and his father's household will bear responsibility ('avon, "guilt", H5771G) for offenses connected to the sanctuary, while a narrower group—Aaron and his sons alone—will bear responsibility for offenses connected to the priesthood itself.

Key words

• tis'u ("you will bear", H5375J) — qal imperfect, 2nd person masculine plural, repeated twice; expresses an ongoing or future obligation shared by the addressees named just before it.
• 'avon ("guilt of", H5771G) — masculine singular construct, appearing twice, each time bound to a different noun (miqdash, then kehunat), producing two distinct construct phrases: "guilt of the sanctuary" and "guilt of your priesthood."
• 'atah ("you", H0859A) — independent personal pronoun, used twice even though the verb already marks person; this doubling gives emphatic weight to "you" as the one addressed.
• beit-'avikha ("house of your father", H1004M + H0001G) — construct chain naming Aaron's paternal household; this phrase appears only in the first clause, not the second.
• kehunat-khem ("your priesthood", H3550 + H9026) — feminine singular construct with 2nd person plural suffix, naming the office itself as the domain of the second responsibility.

What the text says

The verse is built as two parallel clauses, each opening with the emphatic pronoun 'atah ("you") followed by an expanding subject list connected by u- ("and"), then the verb tis'u ("you will bear"), then a construct phrase headed by 'avon ("guilt of"). In the first clause the subject list is longest: "you and your sons and the house of your father" ('atah u-vaneikha u-veit-'avikha), paired with 'avon ha-miqdash, "the guilt of the sanctuary." In the second clause, the subject list contracts to only "you and your sons" ('atah u-vaneikha), paired with 'avon kehunatkhem, "the guilt of your priesthood."

This grammatical narrowing—dropping "the house of your father" in the second clause—creates a structural contrast between two categories of responsibility: one shared by the wider paternal household, and one restricted to Aaron and his sons specifically. The repetition of tis'u and 'avon in identical grammatical slots underlines the parallelism, while the changing construct nouns (miqdash vs. kehunat-khem) mark the difference in what each group is responsible for.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders tis'u ("you will bear") as λήμψεσθε ("you will take/receive"), and translates 'avon ha-miqdash ("guilt of the sanctuary") as τὰς ἀπαρχὰς τῶν ἁγίων ("the firstfruits of the holy things") — a divergence in both verb and noun sense from the Hebrew. For the second clause, the LXX uses ἁμαρτίας ("sins") where the Hebrew has 'avon ("guilt"). The Vulgate follows the Hebrew's repeated 'avon more closely in sense but varies its Latin vocabulary, using iniquitatem ("iniquity") in the first clause and peccata ("sins") in the second, despite the Hebrew using the same word ('avon) both times.