Numbers 8:24

Summary

The verse gives an instruction concerning the Levites: from twenty-five years of age and older, a Levite is to enter into service, specifically to perform the labor connected to the tent of meeting. The sentence functions as a legal/procedural formula stating who qualifies for cultic duty.

Key words

• zot ("this", H2063) + 'asher ("which/that", H0834A) — together open the verse as a formulaic heading, "this is that which [pertains to]," typical of legal instructions.
• Ben ("son of", H1121L) — construct form used idiomatically before a number to express age, literally "a son of twenty-five years."
• yavo' ("he will go/come", H0935G) — qal imperfect, the main verb of the clause, indicating an action understood as recurring or applying going forward (entry into service).
• tzevo' ("to serve", H6633) — qal infinitive, paired with the cognate noun tzava' ("service", H6635I): the root is repeated in two grammatical forms (infinitive + noun) to intensify the sense of "serving a service."
• 'avodat ("service of", H5656H) — feminine construct linking to 'ohel mo'ed ("tent of meeting"), forming a chain: "the service of the tent of meeting."

What the text says

The verse opens with the demonstrative zot joined to the relative 'asher, a formula that introduces a rule ("this is what applies to the Levites"), marking the sentence as instructional rather than narrative. The age requirement is expressed through the construct phrase ben... shanah ("son of ... years"), an idiom that treats age as a kind of belonging — the person is described as "a son of" a given number of years, here twenty-five (chamesh ve-'esrim) "and upward" (va-ma'lah).

The main verb yavo', an imperfect, expresses the entry into service as an ongoing provision rather than a single past event. Its purpose is stated through the infinitive litzvo' combined with the noun tzava' from the same root — a construction sometimes called a cognate accusative, where a verb and a noun from the same root reinforce each other ("to serve a service"), a nuance not reproduced by a single verb in translation. Finally, the phrase ba-'avodat 'ohel mo'ed uses a construct chain ("the service of the tent of meeting") to specify the domain of that service.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the infinitive-plus-cognate-noun construction litzvo' tzava' with a single verb, ἐνεργεῖν ("to work/act"), without reproducing the root-doubling present in the Hebrew. The Vulgate similarly uses one verb, ministrent ("they shall minister"), collapsing the same construction into a simple purpose clause. Both LXX and Vulgate agree with the Hebrew on the numeral for age, "twenty-five" (πέντε καὶ εἰκοσαετοῦς; viginti quinque), showing no divergence on that point.