Numbers 10:17

וְהוּרַד הַמִּשְׁכָּן וְנָסְעוּ בְנֵֽי־גֵרְשׁוֹן וּבְנֵי מְרָרִי נֹשְׂאֵי הַמִּשְׁכָּֽן׃ ס

✦ Hebrew interlinear

Tap a word to see its entry

✦ The same verse in five languages

Hebrew

וְהוּרַ֖ד הַמִּשְׁכָּ֑ן וְנָסְע֤וּ בְנֵֽי־גֵרְשׁוֹן֙ וּבְנֵ֣י מְרָרִ֔י נֹשְׂאֵ֖י הַמִּשְׁכָּֽן׃ ס

Greek (Septuagint)

καὶ καθελοῦσιν τὴν σκηνὴν καὶ ἐξαροῦσιν οἱ υἱοὶ Γεδσὼν καὶ οἱ υἱοὶ Μεραρεί, αἴροντες τὴν σκηνήν.

Greek text from Swete's edition, CC BY-SA 4.0

Latin (Vulgate)

Depositumque est tabernaculum, quod portantes egressi sunt filii Gerson et Merari.

Spanish

Luego desarmaron el tabernáculo, y los hijos de Gersón y los hijos de Merari, que lo transportaban, se pusieron en marcha.

Classic Spanish (Reina-Valera 1909)

Y después que estaba ya desarmado el tabernáculo, movieron los hijos de Gersón y los hijos de Merari, que lo llevaban.

English

Then the tabernacle was taken down, and the Gershonites and the Merarites set out, transporting it.

✦ What the text says

Summary

The verse narrates a sequential event in the wilderness march: the tabernacle is taken down, and then the descendants of Gershon and the descendants of Merari — the ones who carry it — set out.

Key words

hu.Rad ("it was taken down", H3381) — hophal (causative passive) sequential perfect: the tabernacle is not an agent but the recipient of an action performed by unnamed others.
mish.Kan ("tabernacle", H4908) — masculine singular noun with definite article, appearing twice, marking both the object taken down and the object carried.
na.se.'U ("they set out", H5265) — qal sequential perfect, third person plural, marking the next event in the narrative chain after the taking-down.
ve.nei- ("[the] descendants of", H1121A) — masculine plural construct, linking the noun to the proper names Gershon and Merari.
no.se.'Ei ("[the] bearers of", H5375H) — qal participle, masculine plural construct: describes the ongoing function of these groups as carriers, syntactically bound to mish.Kan.

What the text says

The verse opens with a narrative ve ("and", H9001) attached to hu.Rad, a hophal form of H3381. The hophal stem is causative-passive: the tabernacle undergoes the action of being taken down, but the text does not name who performs it. This grammatical choice keeps the tabernacle as the grammatical subject while backgrounding the human agents.

The second clause, joined again by the narrative ve, uses na.se.'U (qal, H5265), a plain active verb: "they set out." Its subjects are ve.nei- Gershon and u.ve.Nei Merari — two construct-chain phrases naming the descendant groups. These are immediately followed by no.se.'Ei ha.mish.Kan, a construct participle phrase meaning "bearers of the tabernacle." Because it is a participle in construct with mish.Kan, it functions as an appositional description of the two groups just named, characterizing them by their ongoing role rather than narrating a separate action. The repetition of mish.Kan — once as the object taken down, once as the object carried — creates a structural link between the two clauses: the same object passes from being dismantled to being transported.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the first clause with active future-tense verbs (καθελοῦσιν, "they will take down"; ἐξαροῦσιν, "they will remove"), supplying an implicit subject where the Hebrew hophal hu.Rad leaves the agent unstated. The Vulgate's depositum est preserves a passive construction closer to the Hebrew hophal, while its quod portantes egressi sunt rephrases the participle no.se.'Ei as a subordinate clause ("carrying which, they went out") rather than a construct-noun apposition. The Spanish RV1909 and SBLIBRE similarly shift the participle into a relative clause ("que lo llevaban" / "que lo transportaban"), a stylistic adaptation not present in the Hebrew construct-chain structure.

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