Numbers 20:6

Summary

Moses and Aaron withdraw from the assembled community to the entrance of the Tent of Meeting, prostrate themselves face-down, and the glory of Yehovah appears to them. The verse marks a transition from public confrontation to a private appeal before the sanctuary.

Key words

• yavo ("he went", H0935G) — qal narrative verb, the first in a chain of three (va-yavo... va-yiplu... va-yera) that structures the verse as a sequence of successive actions.
• penei ("before", H6440G) — construct form of "face," used with min ("from") to mean "away from the presence of" the assembly, not a literal spatial "before."
• qahal ("assembly", H6951) — definite noun (ha-qahal, "the assembly"), the collective body Moses and Aaron leave behind.
• yiplu ("they fell", H5307G) — qal narrative verb, plural, describing the physical posture that follows movement toward the tent.
• peneihem ("their faces", H6440H) — the same noun root as penei above (H6440G) but here plural with a pronominal suffix, used literally for "faces," creating a wordplay: they move away from the "face" of the assembly and fall on their own "faces."
• yera ("it appeared", H7200G) — niphal (passive/reflexive) form of "to see," indicating that the glory is the one perceived, not the one who sees; grammatically the subject of appearing is kevod YHWH ("the glory of Yehovah," H3519 + H3068G).

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built as three consecutive narrative clauses joined by the vav-consecutive, each advancing the action: departure (va-yavo), prostration (va-yiplu), and manifestation (va-yera). The phrase mi-penei ha-qahal ("from before the assembly") uses the construct noun penei idiomatically to mean withdrawal from the group's presence, while later al-peneihem ("on their faces") uses the same root literally for the physical face — a repetition of the same word in two different senses within the verse. The niphal verb yera places grammatical focus on "the glory of Yehovah" as the entity that becomes visible, with Moses and Aaron as the passive recipients (aleihem, "to them").

Differences between versions

The Vulgate inserts material not present in the Hebrew (TAHOT) or the Septuagint: a plea in direct speech ("clamaveruntque ad Dominum... audi clamorem hujus populi...") describing Moses and Aaron crying out for water before the glory appears. Neither the Hebrew text nor the LXX (Ἐπὶ πρόσωπον... καὶ ὤφθη ἡ δόξα κυρίου πρὸς αὐτούς) contains this spoken petition; in both, the sequence moves directly from prostration to the appearance of the glory without recorded speech.