Numbers 20:28

Summary

Moses removes Aaron's priestly garments and clothes Eleazar, Aaron's son, with them. Aaron then dies on top of the mountain, and Moses and Eleazar descend from it. The verse records a sequence of four consecutive actions tied together by narrative syntax.

Key words

• va-yafShet ("and he stripped off", H6584) — hiphil (causative) narrative verb: Moses is the causal agent who removes the garments from Aaron, not Aaron removing them himself.
• va-yalBesh ("and he clothed", H3847) — hiphil narrative verb, parallel in form to the previous verb: Moses causes Eleazar to be clothed, maintaining Moses as the sole subject acting on both Aaron and Eleazar.
• begaDav ("his garments", H0899B) — masculine plural noun in construct with the suffix "his" (referring to Aaron), specifying the object transferred from one person to another.
• va-yaMot ("and he died", H4191) — qal (simple, non-causative) narrative verb: unlike the two preceding hiphil verbs, this action is not caused by another subject; the grammar marks it as happening to Aaron directly.
• be-Rosh ha-Har ("at the top of the mountain", H7218I + H2022G) — construct noun phrase locating the death precisely "at the head/top of" the mountain, using the definite article on "mountain."

What the text says

The verse is built as a chain of four vav-consecutive narrative verbs (yafshet, yalbesh, yamot, yered), each advancing the story in sequence: strip, clothe, die, descend. The first two verbs share the hiphil (causative) stem with Moses as grammatical subject throughout — he is the one who strips 'et-Aharon ("Aaron", H0175) of 'et-begadav ("his garments", H0899B) and who clothes 'otam ("them", H0854+suffix, referring back to the garments) onto 'et-Elazar beno ("Eleazar his son", H0499G + H1121A construct). The double use of the object marker 'et (H0853) in verse segments 4, 6, and 13 marks each direct object explicitly, even though the marker itself has no independent gloss.

The third verb, va-yamot ("and he died", H4191), switches to the simple qal stem with Aaron now as subject, marking a shift from actions performed upon others to an event happening to Aaron himself. The location is specified twice through construct phrases: be-rosh ha-har ("at the top of the mountain") for the death, and later min-ha-har ("from the mountain") for the descent — both using the same noun har ("mountain", H2022G) but different prepositions (H9003 "at" vs. H4480A "from"), marking stationary location versus motion away from it.

Differences between versions

The Vulgate (VULCLEM) renders only part of the verse, stopping after the clothing of Eleazar ("induit eis Eleazarum filium ejus") and omitting Aaron's death and the descent from the mountain found in the Hebrew and LXX. The LXXSWETE text also lacks an explicit equivalent to va-yafshet moshe as a named subject in its first clause ("καὶ ἐξέδυσεν Ἀαρών" — "and Aaron stripped"), differing from the Hebrew where Moshe (H4872) is the explicit subject of the stripping action rather than Aaron being self-subject.