Numbers 8:15

15 After that the Levites may come to serve [at] the tent of meeting, once you have ceremonially cleansed them and presented them as a presentation offering.[a]

Numbers 8:15 Meaning and Commentary

Numbers 8:15

And after that shall the Levites go in
Not into the sanctuary, where only the priests entered, much less into the most holy place, where only the high priest went, and that but once a year, in neither of which places the Levites had anything to do, but into the court of the tabernacle:

to do the service of the tabernacle of the congregation:
to watch there, and to assist the priests at the altar of burnt offering, to take down the tabernacle and bear the vessels of it, and set it up, as occasion required:

and thou shalt cleanse them, and offer them [for] an offering;
cleanse them by sprinkling the water of purifying on them, and offer them by waving them as before; and indeed this is no new thing which is here observed, but what was already done, and therefore should be rendered, "when thou shalt have cleansed them", or "after thou hast cleansed them" and so the particle "vau" is sometimes used F20.


FOOTNOTES:

F20 See Noldius, p. 289, 290, 299.

Numbers 8:15 In-Context

13 "You are to have the Levites stand before Aaron and his sons, and you are to present them before the Lord as a presentation offering.
14 In this way you are to separate the Levites from the rest of the Israelites so that the Levites will belong to Me.
15 After that the Levites may come to serve [at] the tent of meeting, once you have ceremonially cleansed them and presented them as a presentation offering.
16 For they have been exclusively assigned to Me from the Israelites. I have taken them for Myself in place of all who come first from the womb, every Israelite firstborn.
17 For every firstborn among the Israelites is Mine, both man and animal. I consecrated them to Myself on the day I struck down every firstborn in the land of Egypt.

Footnotes 1

  • [a]. Nm 6:20; Ex 29:26-27; Lv 8:26-29
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