Exodus 29

1 “ Now this is what you are to do to consecrate Aaron and his sons to serve Me as priests: Take a young bull and two rams without blemish, 2 along with unleavened bread, unleavened cakes mixed with oil, and unleavened wafers anointed with oil. Make them out of fine wheat flour, 3 put them in a basket, and present them in the basket, along with the bull and the two rams. 4 Then present Aaron and his sons at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting and wash them with water. 5 Take the garments and clothe Aaron with the tunic, the robe of the ephod, the ephod itself, and the breastplate. Fasten the ephod on him with its woven waistband. 6 Put the turban on his head and attach the holy diadem to the turban. 7 Then take the anointing oil and anoint him by pouring it on his head. 8 Present his sons as well and clothe them with tunics. 9 Wrap the sashes around Aaron and his sons and tie headbands on them. The priesthood shall be theirs by a permanent statute. In this way you are to ordain Aaron and his sons. The Order of the Sacrifices (Leviticus 8:22–36) 10 You are to present the bull at the front of the Tent of Meeting, and Aaron and his sons are to lay their hands on its head. 11 And you shall slaughter the bull before the LORD at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting. 12 Take some of the blood of the bull and put it on the horns of the altar with your finger; then pour out the rest of the blood at the base of the altar. 13 Take all the fat that covers the entrails and the lobe of the liver, and both kidneys with the fat on them, and burn them on the altar. 14 But burn the flesh of the bull and its hide and dung outside the camp; it is a sin offering. 15 Take one of the rams, and Aaron and his sons shall lay their hands on its head. 16 You are to slaughter the ram, take its blood, and sprinkle it on all sides of the altar. 17 Cut the ram into pieces, wash the entrails and legs, and place them with its head and other pieces. 18 Then burn the entire ram on the altar; it is a burnt offering to the LORD, a pleasing aroma, an offering made by fire to the LORD. 19 Take the second ram, and Aaron and his sons are to lay their hands on its head. 20 Slaughter the ram, take some of its blood, and put it on the right earlobes of Aaron and his sons, on the thumbs of their right hands, and on the big toes of their right feet. Sprinkle the remaining blood on all sides of the altar. 21 And take some of the blood on the altar and some of the anointing oil and sprinkle it on Aaron and his garments, as well as on his sons and their garments. Then he and his garments will be consecrated, as well as his sons and their garments. 22 Take the fat from the ram, the fat tail, the fat covering the entrails, the lobe of the liver, both kidneys with the fat on them, and the right thigh ( since this is a ram for ordination), 23 along with one loaf of bread, one cake of bread made with oil, and one wafer from the basket of unleavened bread that is before the LORD. 24 Put all these in the hands of Aaron and his sons and wave them before the LORD as a wave offering. 25 Then take them from their hands and burn them on the altar atop the burnt offering as a pleasing aroma before the LORD; it is an offering made by fire to the LORD. 26 Take the breast of the ram of Aaron’s ordination and wave it before the LORD as a wave offering, and it will be your portion. 27 Consecrate for Aaron and his sons the breast of the wave offering that is waved and the thigh of the heave offering that is lifted up from the ram of ordination. 28 This will belong to Aaron and his sons as a regular portion from the Israelites, for it is the heave offering the Israelites will make to the LORD from their peace offerings. 29 The holy garments that belong to Aaron will belong to his sons after him, so they can be anointed and ordained in them. 30 The son who succeeds him as priest and enters the Tent of Meeting to minister in the Holy Place must wear them for seven days. Food for the Priests 31 You are to take the ram of ordination and boil its flesh in a holy place. 32 At the entrance to the Tent of Meeting, Aaron and his sons are to eat the meat of the ram and the bread that is in the basket. 33 They must eat those things by which atonement was made for their ordination and consecration. But no outsider may eat them, because these things are sacred. 34 And if any of the meat of ordination or any bread is left until the morning, you are to burn up the remainder. It must not be eaten, because it is sacred. 35 This is what you are to do for Aaron and his sons based on all that I have commanded you, taking seven days to ordain them. 36 Sacrifice a bull as a sin offering each day for atonement. Purify the altar by making atonement for it, and anoint it to consecrate it. 37 For seven days you shall make atonement for the altar and consecrate it. Then the altar will become most holy; whatever touches the altar will be holy. The Daily Offerings (Numbers 28:1–8) 38 This is what you are to offer regularly on the altar, each day: two lambs that are a year old. 39 Offer one lamb in the morning and the other at twilight. 40 With the first lamb offer a tenth of an ephah of fine flour, mixed with a quarter hin of oil from pressed olives, and a drink offering of a quarter hin of wine. 41 And offer the second lamb at twilight with the same grain offering and drink offering as in the morning, as a pleasing aroma, an offering made by fire to the LORD. 42 For the generations to come, this burnt offering shall be made regularly at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting before the LORD, where I will meet you to speak with you. 43 I will also meet with the Israelites there, and that place will be consecrated by My glory. 44 So I will consecrate the Tent of Meeting and the altar, and I will consecrate Aaron and his sons to serve Me as priests. God Will Dwell among the People 45 Then I will dwell among the Israelites and be their God. 46 And they will know that I am the LORD their God, who brought them out of the land of Egypt so that I might dwell among them. I am the LORD their God.

✦ What the text says

## Summary Exodus 29 gives instructions for consecrating Aaron and his sons as priests through washing, vesting, anointing, and a sequence of sacrifices (a bull and two rams), followed by regulations for a perpetual daily offering. The chapter closes with Yahweh's declaration that he will meet Israel at the Tent of Meeting and dwell among them. ## Key words - *kadesh* ("consecrate", H6942G) — piel infinitive, appears repeatedly (vv.1, 27, 33, 36, 37, 44); the piel stem marks an intensive, causative act of setting apart, applied to persons, altar, and garments alike. - *mille'* ("fill", H4390) — piel infinitive used in the phrase "fill the hand" (*malle' et-yad*, vv.9, 29, 33, 35), an idiom for installing someone in priestly office; the text uses "hand-filling" rather than a single word for "ordain." - *tenufah* ("wave-offering", H8573) and *terumah* ("contribution", H8641) — nouns naming two distinct ritual gestures (vv.24-28); the text distinguishes the portion "waved" before Yahweh from the portion "lifted/raised" as a due for the priests. - *shakhanti* ("I will dwell", H7931) — qal sequential perfect, first-person (v.45), the verb from which the later noun for "dwelling place" derives; grammatically it continues the chain of divine actions ("I will consecrate... I will dwell... I will become"). - *nichoach* ("soothing", H5207) in the phrase *reach nichoach* ("odor of soothing", vv.18, 25, 41) — construct noun describing the effect of the burnt portions ascending in smoke. ## What the text says The chapter is built almost entirely on chains of sequential perfect verbs (*ve-* + perfect, glossed "you will do X, and Y, and Z"), a common Biblical Hebrew construction for step-by-step legal or ritual instruction. This creates a continuous procedural flow from v.1 through v.37: take, bring near, wash, clothe, anoint, slaughter, take blood, put, burn. The second-person masculine singular addressee (Moses) is the one instructed to perform nearly every action, even though Aaron and his sons are the objects of consecration; verbs like *ve-hilbashta* ("and you will clothe him", H3847) and *u-mashachta* ("and you will anoint him", H4886) keep Moses grammatically as agent throughout. The repeated direct object marker *'et* attached to pronominal suffixes (*'otam*, *'oto*) tracks precisely which item — the bull, the rams, the blood, the garments — receives each action, allowing the Hebrew to distinguish, for instance, whose hands are filled (*yad Aharon*, "hand of Aaron," H3027R construct) from whose blood is applied where. The construct chains such as *cheshev ha'efod* ("girdle of the ephod", H2805) and *ner ha-kodesh* ("crown of the [the] holiness", H5145H+H6944G) show how Hebrew builds compound ritual-object names through simple noun-noun juxtaposition rather than adjectives. Verses 42-46 shift from procedural sequential perfects to first-person divine speech, where Yahweh states what he himself will do (*ve-noadti*, "and I will meet," H3259; *ve-kidashti*, "and I will consecrate," H6942G) — the same verb root *kadesh* used for consecrating priests in vv.1, 27, 33 is applied here to Yahweh's own consecrating action toward the tent, altar, and priests, linking human ritual action to a stated divine act using identical vocabulary. ## Differences between versions The LXX (v.9) renders the phrase as *hierateia moi eis ton aiona* ("priesthood for me forever"), inserting "for me" (*moi*) where the Hebrew *chukkat olam* ("statute of perpetuity", H2708+H5769G) has no explicit "to me." In v.42, the LXX title reads *thysian endelechismou* ("sacrifice of continuance"), a slightly different image from the Hebrew *olat tamid* ("burnt offering of continuity", H5930A+H8548). The Vulgate at v.36 renders *chatta't* as "pro peccato... hostiam expiationis" ("sacrifice of expiation"), broadening the specific Hebrew term *cha.Tat* ("sin offering", H2403H) into a more general expiatory vocabulary. Verse 46 in the Hebrew and Vulgate/RV1909 ends the chapter, while the LXX text supplied includes an expanded clause ("and they will know that I am the Lord

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