What Does Numbers 4:43 Mean in the King James?
From thirty years old and upward even unto fifty years old, every one that entereth into the service, for the work in the tabernacle of the congregation,
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
The verse names sacred service as a bounded season of real work, carried out within an ordered company.
THE MEANING
Service here has a defined span, from thirty to fifty, and takes the form of work in the tent of meeting. Sacred labor is embodied, shared, and counted person by person. The verse holds that work within a season and a common place.
THE ROOT
לַעֲבֹד עֲבֹדָה
laʿavod ʿavodah
GROWS FROM
ע־ב־ד
ʿ-b-d
to work, serve, or labor
The Hebrew repeats the root in the phrase “to work work,” joining the action to its purpose. The labor itself is the service: it is something people carry out with their hands, not just a title or identity.
ALSO GROWS
ʿavad: to work, serve, or cultivate
עָבַד
The verb makes service an action performed through labor.
ʿeved: servant or worker
עֶבֶד
This branch places the work in the hands of actual participants.
ʿavodah: work, labor, or service
עֲבֹדָה
This is the noun used for the work in the verse.
לַצָּבָא
la-tsava
GROWS FROM
צ־ב־א
ṣ-b-ʾ
to muster as a host or serve in an organized body
This word carries the sense of an ordered company as well as service. The verse places each person’s labor within a coordinated body, giving the work a shared structure.
ALSO GROWS
tsava: host or army
צָבָא
The same root can name an organized group, opening the collective sense within “service.”
litsbo: to muster or serve as part of a host
לִצְבֹא
This verbal form brings out the assigned, active character of the service.
tzevaʾot: hosts or armies
צְבָאוֹת
The plural preserves the root’s sense of many gathered into an ordered whole.
אֹהֶל מוֹעֵד
ohel moʿed
GROWS FROM
י־ע־ד
y-ʿ-d
to appoint or designate
“tabernacle of the congregation” in this verse is ohel moʿed. The tent is named אֹהֶל מוֹעֵד (ohel moʿed), the tent of appointed meeting. The work gathers people, labor, and a designated place into one shared encounter.
ALSO GROWS
yaʿad: to appoint or designate
יָעַד
This verb supplies the sense of something deliberately set in place.
moʿed: appointed meeting or appointed time
מוֹעֵד
The word names the meeting place as an appointed gathering.
THE PATTERN
Sacred work takes concrete, embodied form, with each person’s part held within a shared order.
And they came, every one whose heart stirred him up, and every one whom his spirit made willing, and they brought the LORD’s offering to the work of the tabernacle of the congregation, and for all his service, and for the holy garments.I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.As every man hath received the gift, even so minister the same one to another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God.THE THREAD
This is the sum of the tabernacle, even of the tabernacle of testimony, as it was counted, according to the commandment of Moses, for the service of the Levites, by the hand of Ithamar, son to Aaron the priest.Numbers’ “work” and Exodus’s “service” use עֲבֹדָה (ʿavodah, labor or service). The shared root reveals the tabernacle’s sacred structure as work carried by counted, assigned people.
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