What Does Numbers 33:38 Mean?
And Aaron the priest went up into Mount Hor at the mouth of the LORD, and died there, in the fortieth year after the children of Israel had gone out of the land of Egypt, on the first day of the fifth month.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And Aaron the priest went up into mount Hor at the commandment of the LORD, and died there, in the fortieth year after the children of Israel were come out of the land of Egypt, in the first day of the fifth month.THE KEY
The phrase KJV renders “at the commandment of the LORD” literally says “at the mouth of the LORD,” placing Aaron’s final ascent within a spoken word.
THE MEANING
The verse holds ascent and death together: movement upward does not make the ending unreal. It places that ending within the long passage out from Egypt, so the journey and its loss remain in view at the same time.
THE ROOT
עַל־פִּי יְהוָה
ʿal-pî YHWH
GROWS FROM
פֶּה
Mouth; the source of spoken utterance. In this phrase, “at the mouth of the LORD” means at the LORD’s word or command.
The English “commandment” carries the sense of an order, while the Hebrew phrase also gives it a bodily image: the LORD’s mouth. Aaron’s ascent takes place at that spoken word, and the verse immediately names his death there.
ALSO GROWS
peh: Mouth.
פֶּה
The basic noun behind the phrase keeps the image of speech present beneath “commandment.”
pî: “Mouth of,” the construct form of mouth.
פִּי
This is the form used in the verse’s phrase “at the mouth of the LORD.”
וַיַּעַל
vayyaʿal
GROWS FROM
עלה
To go up, ascend, or rise.
“went up” in this verse is vayyaʿal. The Hebrew verb names an actual ascent toward Mount Hor. The same root appears in words for ascent and for what “goes up,” letting upward motion remain audible even as the verse states plainly that Aaron dies.
ALSO GROWS
ʿaliyyah: Ascent; going up.
עֲלִיָּה
This noun preserves the same upward movement named in Aaron’s final journey.
ʿolah: A whole burnt offering; something that goes up.
עֹלָה
The shared root joins the ideas of going up and rising, though the verse does not call Aaron’s death an offering.
THE PATTERN
Scripture names death as a real event within a larger passage, without hiding either the ending or the movement around it.
So Moses, the servant of the LORD, died there in the land of Moab, according to the word of the LORD.And as it is laid up for people to die once, and after this, judgment.A time to bear, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted.THE THREAD
So Moses, the servant of the LORD, died there in the land of Moab, according to the word of the LORD.Numbers says Aaron went up עַל־פִּי יְהוָה (ʿal-pî YHWH), “at the mouth of the LORD”; Deuteronomy uses the same Hebrew phrase for Moses’s death, rendered “according to the word of the LORD.” The repeated image connects their endings to the LORD’s spoken word.
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