Numbers 3:1

1 These be the generations of Aaron and of Moses, in the day in which the Lord spake to Moses, in the hill of Sinai. (These be the generations of Aaron and of Moses, on the day in which the Lord spoke to Moses, on Mount Sinai.)

Numbers 3:1 Meaning and Commentary

Numbers 3:1

These also [are] the generations of Aaron and Moses
The descendants of them, those of the former, who is named first, because the eldest, were priests, and those of the latter Levites, and who are not very plainly pointed at, but are included among the Amramites, ( Numbers 3:27 ) ; the posterity of Moses being very obscure, only Levites, and these not particularly named but swallowed up among the Kohathites: find the following account was as it stood,

in the day [that] the Lord spoke with Moses in mount Sinai;
and not, altogether as it then, was when he spoke to him in the wilderness, of Sinai, for then Aaron had four sons, but now two of them were dead as is after observed; and it seems to be for the sake of this circumstance chiefly that this clause is so put.

Numbers 3:1 In-Context

1 These be the generations of Aaron and of Moses, in the day in which the Lord spake to Moses, in the hill of Sinai. (These be the generations of Aaron and of Moses, on the day in which the Lord spoke to Moses, on Mount Sinai.)

2 And these be the names of the sons of Aaron; his first engendered, Nadab (Nadab, his first-born); afterward, Abihu, and Eleazar, and Ithamar;

3 these be the names of Aaron's sons, (the) priests, that were anointed, and whose hands were [ful]filled and hallowed, that they should be set in priesthood. (these be the names of Aaron's sons, the priests, who were anointed, and consecrated, so that they could be installed, or ordained, in the priesthood.)

4 Nadab and Abihu [died], when they offered alien fire in the sight of the Lord, in the desert of Sinai, (and they) were dead without free children; and Eleazar and Ithamar were set in priesthood before Aaron their father. (But then Nadab and Abihu were killed, when they offered unholy fire before the Lord, in the Sinai Desert, and they died before having any children; and so Eleazar and Ithamar were ordained in the priesthood in the sight of their father Aaron.)

5 And the Lord spake to Moses, saying,