Numbers 33:39

Summary

This verse records Aaron's age at his death — 123 years — and the place where he died, Mount Hor. The Hebrew states his age using the traditional "son of X years" idiom, followed by a temporal clause specifying the circumstance and location of his death.

Key words

• ben ("[was] a son of", H1121L) — construct form of "son," used idiomatically to introduce a person's age; literally "a son of [number] years."
• shalosh ("three", H7969), 'esrim ("twenty", H6242), me'at ("one hundred", H3967) — three cardinal numbers joined by ve ("and", H9002), listed smallest to largest (3, then 20, then 100) to total 123.
• moto ("dying", H4191 + H9043) — qal infinitive construct with the third-person suffix "his," meaning "in his dying" or "when he died"; the infinitive construct with be- ("when/in", H9003) forms a temporal clause.
• Hor ha-Har ("Hor the mountain", H2023G + H9009 + H2022G) — the place name Hor followed by ha-har ("the mountain"), the definite article marking it as "the mountain," yielding the sense "Hor, the mountain" or "Mount Hor."

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built around two linked constructions: an age formula and a temporal clause. The age formula uses ben ("son of") in construct with the number phrase shalosh ve-'esrim u-me'at shanah — literally "a son of three and twenty and a hundred years." The numbers are strung together with repeated ve ("and"), moving from smallest unit (three) to largest (hundred), a common pattern in Biblical Hebrew numeral sequences.

The second clause, be-moto be-Hor ha-Har ("when he died in Hor, the mountain"), uses the infinitive construct moto governed by the preposition be-, a standard way to express "when X happened" without a finite verb. The place name itself is doubled in sense: Hor is the proper name, and ha-har ("the mountain") is appended with the definite article, so the Hebrew text names both the specific site and its generic type.

Differences between versions

The LXX (Swete) renders the age with the same ascending order as the Hebrew (τριῶν καὶ εἴκοσι καὶ ἑκατὸν, "three and twenty and hundred"), but uses a finite verb, ἀπέθνησκεν ("was dying," imperfect), rather than an infinitive construct as in the Hebrew moto.

The Vulgate fragment provided (annorum centum viginti trium) orders the numbers from largest to smallest — "hundred, twenty, three" — reversing the Hebrew's ascending sequence. This fragment also does not include the clause naming Aaron's death or Mount Hor, though this may reflect the extent of the provided excerpt rather than the full verse.