Numbers 12:15

Summary

The verse reports that Miriam was shut outside the camp for seven days, and that the people did not resume traveling until she was brought back in. The sentence describes both an event affecting Miriam and its consequence for the community's movement.

Key words

• ti.sa.Ger ("she was shut up", H5462) — niphal (passive) verb: Miriam does not act, she undergoes the action of being confined; the subject who confines her is not named in the verb form.
• Chutz ("[the] outside", H2351) combined with mi. ("from", H9006) and la.mma.cha.Neh ("to/of the camp", H9005+H4264) — the phrase locates her physically: outside relative to the camp, marking a spatial exclusion.
• shiv.'At... ya.Mim ("seven... days", H7651+H3117G) — construct chain "seven of days," giving a fixed, quantified duration for the confinement.
• na.Sa' ("it set out", H5265) — qal perfect: a completed, simple-aspect verb describing the people's (non-)action, negated by lo' ("not", H3808).
• he.'a.Sef ("was received/gathered", H0622) — niphal infinitive: an event without a stated agent, functioning as the temporal boundary ("until the gathering-in of Miriam") that ends the people's halt.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built in two clauses joined by the narrative vav (va., H9001). The first clause has Miriam as grammatical subject but in the niphal (passive) form of ti.sa.Ger, so the text states that the shutting-out happens to her, without specifying who performs it. This is reinforced by the locative phrase mi.Chutz la.mma.cha.Neh ("from outside to/of the camp"), stacking two prepositional elements to stress her position relative to the camp boundary, followed by the construct-numeral phrase "shiv.'At yamim," giving the duration as seven days.

The second clause shifts subject to ha.'Am ("the people", H5971A) with a qal perfect negated verb, lo' na.Sa' ("did not set out"), a straightforward completed-aspect statement of non-movement. This clause is bound to the first temporally by 'ad ("until", H5704) plus the niphal infinitive he.'a.Sef ("the being-gathered-in"), again passive/agentless, describing Miriam's return as an event that happens rather than an action she performs. The grammar thus frames both the confinement and the reincorporation as things that occur to Miriam, while the people's halt and eventual resumption are framed as their own completed action, contingent on that event.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders ti.sa.Ger ("she was shut up") with ἀφωρίσθη ("was separated/set apart"), and renders he.'a.Sef ("was gathered/received") with ἐκαθαρίσθη ("was purified/cleansed") — a different verb than the Hebrew's "gathering" root. The Vulgate uses exclusa est ("she was shut out") for the first verb, matching the exclusion sense, and revocata est ("she was called back") for he.'a.Sef, differing from both the Hebrew's "gathered" and the LXX's "purified."