Numbers 11:25

Summary

Yehovah descends in the cloud, speaks to Moses, and takes part of the ruach ("spirit", H7307) that rested on Moses, distributing it onto the seventy elders. When this spirit settles on them, they prophesy in the hithpael form, and the verse closes with a note about whether they continued doing so.

Key words

• ya'tzel ("he shared/withdrew", H0680) — qal narrative verb; a rare root describing the action of withholding or apportioning something from a whole, here applied to the ruach.
• min-ha-Ruach ("some of the spirit", H4480A + H7307) — the preposition min is partitive: it marks that only a portion of the spirit on Moses is taken, not the whole of it.
• yitten ("he put/gave", H5414) — qal narrative verb continuing the sequence of divine actions (came down → spoke → shared → gave).
• yitnabe'u ("they prophesied", H5012) — hithpael narrative form, the reflexive/reciprocal stem of the root for prophesying, distinct from a plain active form.
• yasafu ("they added/continued", H3254) — qal perfect (completed aspect, not narrative vav-consecutive), negated by lo ("not", H3808), closing the sequence with a statement about repetition.

What the text says

The verse is built as a chain of narrative (vav-consecutive) verbs — yered, yedabber, ya'tzel, yitten, yehi, yitnabe'u — each marked "and then," producing a rapid sequence of divine action: descent, speech, apportioning, giving, resting, prophesying. This chain breaks only at the final clause, lo yasafu, which uses a perfect (completed-aspect) verb rather than a narrative form, setting it apart syntactically as a summarizing or concluding remark rather than another link in the sequence of events.

The preposition min before ha-Ruach ("the spirit") is partitive — the text specifies that Yehovah took "some of" the spirit on Moses, not the entirety, before placing it on the seventy elders. The verb ya'tzel itself denotes an act of separating out or reserving a portion, reinforcing this partitive sense grammatically. The prophesying itself is expressed with the hithpael stem of nb', a form associated with reflexive or reciprocal action, differing from a plain active verb form.

Differences between versions

The closing clause shows a real divergence. The Hebrew lo yasafu ("they did not add/continue") and the LXX οὐκέτι προσέθεντο ("they no longer added [to do so]") both indicate the elders did not repeat the prophesying. The Vulgate, however, reads nec ultra cessaverunt ("they did not cease further"), which states the opposite outcome — that the prophesying continued rather than stopped.