Numbers 10:7

Summary

The verse instructs that when the assembly (qahal, H6951) is to be summoned, the people are to sound one type of blast (titke'u, H8628) but not another (tari'u, H7321). The text distinguishes two distinct verbal roots for trumpet signals, not merely a difference in volume or duration.

Key words

• hakHil ("to summon/assemble", H6950) — hiphil infinitive construct, causative form indicating the act of causing the group to gather; combined with the preposition ve (H9003) it forms the temporal clause "when summoning."
• qahal ("assembly", H6951) — masculine singular noun with the definite article ha (H9009), the direct object of the summoning, marked by the particle 'et (H0853).
• titke'u ("you will blow", H8628) — qal (simple stem) imperfect, second person masculine plural, from the root taqa', referring to a plain blast.
• tari'u ("you will sound an alarm", H7321) — hiphil (causative stem) imperfect, second person masculine plural, from the root rua', a different verb root than taqa', denoting a distinct type of sound, often associated elsewhere with shouting or war-signals.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence opens with a temporal clause built on the hiphil infinitive hakHil ("in the summoning of"), governing the direct object ha-qahal ("the assembly"). This clause sets the occasion: the moment the assembly is to be gathered. The main clause then presents two parallel imperfect verbs in construction with ve...lo ("and not"): titke'u, from the root taqa', and tari'u, from the root rua'. These are not the same verb intensified or negated in degree — they are two separate roots, each with its own semantic range in Biblical Hebrew. Taqa' is commonly used for the act of blowing a horn or trumpet in a simple sense, while rua' carries connotations of shouting, raising a war-cry, or sounding an alarm elsewhere in the text corpus. The grammar thus sets up a contrast between two categories of sound signal via distinct roots, rather than through an adverb or intensifier modifying a single verb.

Differences between versions

The LXX preserves the two-term contrast with σαλπιεῖτε ("you will trumpet") against οὐ σημασίᾳ ("not with a signal-sound"), keeping a lexical distinction paralleling the Hebrew roots. The Vulgate renders the contrast as "simplex tubarum clangor" ("a simple sound of trumpets") against "concise ululabunt" ("they will not howl in broken/interrupted fashion"), interpreting the taqa'/rua' distinction as one of continuous versus broken sound. The BSB renders this as "long blasts" versus "short ones," an interpretive gloss not explicitly present in the Hebrew grammar, which instead relies on two different verbal roots rather than a stated duration.