Numbers 8:15

15 Thereafter the Levites may go in to do service at the tent of meeting, once you have cleansed them and presented them as an elevation offering.

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 Then you shall have the Levites stand before Aaron and his sons, and you shall present them as an elevation offering to the Lord.
14 Thus you shall separate the Levites from among the other Israelites, and the Levites shall be mine.
15 Thereafter the Levites may go in to do service at the tent of meeting, once you have cleansed them and presented them as an elevation offering.
16 For they are unreservedly given to me from among the Israelites; I have taken them for myself, in place of all that open the womb, the firstborn of all the Israelites.
17 For all the firstborn among the Israelites are mine, both human and animal. On the day that I struck down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt I consecrated them for myself,
New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.