Numbers 11:23

Summary

Yehovah responds to Moses with two rhetorical questions: whether his own "hand" has become short (i.e., limited in power), and whether the word he has spoken will indeed reach fulfillment for Moses to see. The verse functions as a divine reply that reasserts capacity to act, framed entirely as interrogatives rather than direct affirmations.

Key words

• yad ("[the] hand of", H3027H) — construct noun, "hand of YHWH," a idiom for power or capacity to act; here the subject of the following verb.
• tiqtsar ("is it short", H7114A) — qal imperfect, 3rd feminine singular (agreeing with yad, grammatically feminine), literally "will it be short/curtailed" — an ongoing/potential state, not a finished fact.
• ha ("¿", H9008) — interrogative particle prefixed twice (on yad and on yiqre), marking both clauses as questions, not statements.
• tir'eh ("you will see", H7200G) — qal imperfect, 2nd masculine singular, addressed to Moses, expressing a future event he himself will witness.
• 'im-lo' ("or?...not", H0518A + H3808) — a conditional/disjunctive pairing that, following a preceding interrogative, functions idiomatically as "...or not," closing the rhetorical question left open by ha.

What the text says

The verse opens with the narrative chain va-yomer ("and he said," H0559), marking a direct divine reply to the preceding complaint. The first rhetorical question, ha-yad YHWH tiqtsar, places the interrogative ha on the noun-phrase "hand of YHWH," with the verb tiqtsar in the imperfect agreeing grammatically with the feminine noun yad. The imperfect aspect keeps the question open-ended, about ongoing or future limitation of capacity, rather than describing a completed condition.

The second half shifts to 'atah tir'eh ("now you will see"), a first-person direct address using the imperfect tir'eh to project a future confirming event. The final clause repeats the interrogative ha before yiqre-kha devari ("will my word happen to you"), where devari ("my word", H1697G) is a construct noun with a first-person suffix, syntactically the subject of yiqre. The clause ends with 'im lo', a disjunctive pairing that, attached to a prior ha-question, produces the sense "...or not" — leaving the outcome deliberately unresolved within the grammar itself, structurally mirroring the first rhetorical question.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the first clause as a negative statement, "χεὶρ Κυρίου οὐκ ἐξαρκέσει" ("the hand of the Lord will not suffice"), rather than preserving the Hebrew interrogative ha. The Vulgate retains the question form ("Numquid manus Domini invalida est?") matching the Hebrew's interrogative structure. For tir'eh ("you will see"), the LXX has "γνώσει" ("you will know"), while the Vulgate keeps "videbis" ("you will see"), aligning more closely with the Hebrew. The final 'im lo' is rendered by the LXX as "ἢ οὔ" ("or not"), matching the disjunctive sense of the Hebrew construction.