Numbers 11:6

Summary

The speakers declare that their nephesh is dried up, and that nothing remains before their eyes except the manna. The sentence uses a construct chain and a directional preposition to describe eyes fixed only on the manna, with nothing else in view.

Key words

• naf.She.nu ("appetite/soul", H5315L) — construct noun + 1st person plural suffix, "our nephesh"; the base noun nephesh denotes soul, throat, or life-force, rendered here as "appetite" by the gloss provided.
• ye.ve.Shah ("dry", H3002) — feminine singular adjective agreeing with nephesh, describing its state as dried up.
• 'ein ("there not", H0369) + Kol ("anything", H3605) — construct existential negation, "there is nothing of."
• bil.Ti ("except", H1115) — restrictive particle limiting what follows to the sole exception.
• 'ei.Nei.nu ("eyes-our", H5869H) — dual construct noun + suffix, "our eyes," the grammatical subject of the final clause.

What the text says

The verse divides into two clauses joined by ve ("and", H9002). The first clause, naf.She.nu yeveshah, places the construct noun nephesh with its 1st person plural suffix before the feminine adjective yeveshah, a standard noun-adjective agreement pattern describing the state of the nephesh as dried.

The second clause opens with the negative existential 'ein Kol, "there is nothing," followed by the restrictive bilti ("except", H1115), which introduces the sole exception to that negation. The exception is expressed through the prepositional phrase 'el hamman ("to the manna"), using 'el ("to", H0413) with the definite article ha ("the", H9009) prefixed to man ("manna", H4478A). The subject of this second clause, 'einenu ("our eyes", H5869H), appears at the very end of the sentence, after the prepositional phrase — a Hebrew word order in which the eyes are grammatically directed "to" the manna, rather than the manna being the object of a verb "to see." The dual form of 'einenu reflects the paired nature of eyes in Hebrew.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew naf.She.nu yeveshah ("our nephesh is dry") is rendered by the LXX as ἡ Ψυχὴ ἡμῶν κατάξηρος, using the intensified compound adjective κατάξηρος ("thoroughly dried"), while the Vulgate uses the simpler arida est ("is dry"), without the intensifying prefix present in the LXX. The BSB gloss "appetite is gone" interprets nephesh + yeveshah as a state of lost desire for food, whereas the Hebrew construction literally states that the nephesh itself is dry, without a verb of "going" or "loss." The Vulgate's nihil aliud respiciunt oculi nostri ("our eyes look at nothing else") supplies an explicit verb of seeing that is not present in the Hebrew, where the eyes are simply stated as being "to" ('el) the manna, without a finite verb.