Numbers 12:3

Summary

Numbers 12:3 is a narrative aside describing Moses' character: he is called anav ("humble", H6035) "very" (me'od, H3966), to a degree exceeding every other adam ("person", H0120G) living "on the surface of the ground." The verse functions as an explanatory parenthesis within the surrounding narrative.

Key words

• 'Ish ("man", H0376G) — masculine singular noun, here in construct-like apposition with the proper name, forming the phrase "the man Moses."
• anav ("[was] humble", H6035) — masculine singular adjective functioning as the predicate of the nominal clause; no verb "to be" appears in the Hebrew, it is implied.
• me'od ("very", H3966) — intensifier modifying anav, marked here grammatically as a cardinal number but functioning adverbially to heighten the adjective.
• Kol ("every", H3605) — construct noun introducing the comparative phrase "more than all/every."
• pe.Nei ("[the] surface of", H6440H) — plural construct noun, part of the idiom "upon the face of the ground," a fixed construction indicating the whole inhabited earth.

What the text says

The verse opens with the conjunction ve ("and", H9002) attached to the definite article ha ("the", H9009) plus 'Ish ("man", H0376G), producing "and the man," followed immediately by the proper name mo.Sheh ("Moses", H4872) in apposition. This construction — article + noun + proper name — sets up Moses as the subject before any predicate is given, a common Biblical Hebrew pattern for introducing or re-identifying a character mid-narrative.

The predicate itself, anav me'od ("humble very"), is a verbless clause: Hebrew does not require a copula in the present tense, so the adjective anav (H6035) directly follows the subject with no linking verb in the source text. The intensifier me'od (H3966) sits after the adjective it modifies, which is the normal Hebrew word order for adjective + intensifier, unlike the English "very humble."

The comparative clause is built with mi ("more than", H9006) prefixed to Kol ("every", H3605), yielding "more than all/every," followed by ha.'Adam ("the person", H0120G) — here used generically for humankind rather than the individual name. This generic 'adam is further specified by the relative clause introduced by 'a.Sher ("who", H0834A): "who [was] on the surface of the ground," using the construct phrase pe.Nei ha.'a.da.Mah ("surface of the ground"), a standard idiom meaning the inhabited earth. Grammatically, the whole comparative structure (mi... Kol... ha.'Adam... 'a.Sher...) forms a single extended noun phrase functioning as the object of comparison for anav me'od.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders anav (H6035) as praus ("meek"), a Greek term with a slightly different semantic range than "humble." The Vulgate uses mitissimus ("most gentle/mild"), a superlative adjective, where the Hebrew instead uses a simple adjective intensified by me'od ("very") rather than a true grammatical superlative. The Vulgate also frames the whole verse with enim ("for"), explicitly marking it as an explanatory clause, a connective not present in the Hebrew conjunction ve ("and").