The Aaronic Blessing continues in active Jewish liturgical use today through nesiat kapayim, the ritual raising of hands, in which kohanim, men of priestly descent, pronounce the blessing over the congregation on festivals and, in some communities, more frequently, with a distinctive hand position associated in later popular culture with a well-known science-fiction hand gesture, though the ritual predates that association by many centuries.
Christian traditions adopted the same blessing as a closing benediction in a wide range of denominations, typically spoken by an ordained minister over the gathered congregation at the end of a worship service, adapting a specifically Israelite priestly formula into a general Christian liturgical closing without significantly altering its wording. Its grammatical structure, addressed by God to the priests about the people rather than spoken by the people to God, is part of what theologians point to in distinguishing a blessing, a word of favor pronounced by an authorized figure, from ordinary prayer, a request directed upward. This distinction has kept the Aaronic Blessing in a liturgical category of its own across both religions that use it, positioned at the close of a service as something given to the congregation rather than as one more petition offered on its behalf.