Numbers 8:26

וְשֵׁרֵת אֶת־אֶחָיו בְּאֹהֶל מוֹעֵד לִשְׁמֹר מִשְׁמֶרֶת וַעֲבֹדָה לֹא יַעֲבֹד כָּכָה תַּעֲשֶׂה לַלְוִיִּם בְּמִשְׁמְרֹתָֽם׃ פ

✦ Hebrew interlinear

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✦ The same verse in five languages

Hebrew

וְשֵׁרֵ֨ת אֶת־אֶחָ֜יו בְּאֹ֤הֶל מוֹעֵד֙ לִשְׁמֹ֣ר מִשְׁמֶ֔רֶת וַעֲבֹדָ֖ה לֹ֣א יַעֲבֹ֑ד כָּ֛כָה תַּעֲשֶׂ֥ה לַלְוִיִּ֖ם בְּמִשְׁמְרֹתָֽם׃ פ

Greek (Septuagint)

καὶ λειτουργήσει ὁ ἀδελφὸς αὐτοῦ ἐν τῆ σκηνῇ τοῦ μαρτυρίου φυλάσσειν φυλακάς, ἔργα δὲ οὐκ ἐργάζεται. οὕτως ποιήσεις τοῖς Λευείταις ἐν ταῖς φυλακαῖς αὐτῶν.

Greek text from Swete's edition, CC BY-SA 4.0

Latin (Vulgate)

eruntque ministri fratrum suorum in tabernaculo fœderis, ut custodiant quæ sibi fuerunt commendata: opera autem ipsa non faciant. Sic dispones Levitis in custodiis suis.

Spanish

Solo ayudarán a sus hermanos en la Tienda del Encuentro a cumplir con sus deberes de guardia, pero no realizarán ningún trabajo pesado. Así organizarás a los levitas en cuanto a sus obligaciones”.

Classic Spanish (Reina-Valera 1909)

Pero servirán con sus hermanos en el tabernáculo del testimonio, para hacer la guarda, bien que no servirán en el ministerio. Así harás de los Levitas cuanto á sus oficios.

English

After that, they may assist their brothers in fulfilling their duties at the Tent of Meeting, but they themselves are not to do the work. This is how you are to assign responsibilities to the Levites.”

✦ What the text says

Summary

The verse describes what an older Levite may and may not do in the tent of meeting: he continues to assist ("serve") his brothers by keeping a duty, but he is barred from performing the avodah, the heavier labor. The passage closes with a command establishing this rule as the standard for how Levites are to be assigned duties.

Key words

sheRet ("he will serve", H8334) — Piel (intensive) form of the root שרת, describing an assisting/ministering type of service, distinct from the root used later for the forbidden labor.
'echav ("his brothers", H0251H) — masculine plural noun in construct with a possessive suffix, marked by the object particle 'et, showing the Levite acts on behalf of his kin, not independently.
mishmeret ("a duty", H4931) — feminine singular noun; the same root reappears later in the plural (mishmerotam, "their duties"), framing the whole verse between a general duty and a distributed set of duties.
ya'avod ("he will serve", H5647H) — Qal imperfect of the root עבד, negated by lo' ("not", H3808); this is a different root from sheRet, marking a distinct category of activity that is explicitly prohibited.
kakhah ("thus", H3602) — adverb introducing the closing instruction, signaling that the preceding description functions as a rule to be applied.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence draws a grammatical contrast between two different service-roots applied to the same person. The older Levite is the subject of sheRet (Piel, H8334), a verb built on the root שרת, when helping "his brothers" — marked with the direct object particle 'et plus the plural noun 'echav with a third-person suffix — "in the tent of meeting." This action is defined further by the infinitive lishmor ("to keep") governing the noun mishmeret ("a duty"), indicating the nature of the assistance: watching over an assigned charge rather than performing labor.

The second half of the verse negates a different verb, ya'avod (Qal imperfect of עבד, H5647), cognate with the noun avodah ("service", H5656) that precedes it. Because Biblical Hebrew here uses two separate roots for "serve" — שרת and עבד — the text draws a linguistic boundary between permitted assistance and prohibited labor, a distinction not always visible when both are rendered by the same target-language verb "serve."

The final clause, introduced by the adverb kakhah ("thus"), shifts to a second-person imperfect verb, ta'aseh ("you will do"), addressing the one giving instructions (typically read as continuing Moses' address), followed by mishmerotam — the plural form of the same noun mishmeret used earlier — applied "to the Levites" collectively, generalizing the individual case into a standing rule for their "duties."

Differences between versions

The Hebrew object phrase 'et-'echav ("his brothers", plural, marked as direct object) becomes in the LXX a nominative singular subject, ho adelphos autou ("his brother"), which restructures the clause so that the brother, rather than the older Levite, is the one performing λειτουργήσει. The Vulgate renders the same phrase as ministri fratrum suorum ("ministers of their brothers"), turning the Levites into subjects who minister for their brothers in a genitive relation, differing from both the Hebrew object-marked plural and the LXX's singular subject construction.

This explanation describes the text using linguistic data; it adds no doctrine or confessional interpretation.