Numbers 13:20

Summary

The verse poses a series of paired alternative questions about the land — whether it is fertile or poor, wooded or bare — followed by a command (expressed through sequential perfect verbs) to act boldly and bring back fruit. It closes with a parenthetical note fixing the season as that of the first ripe grapes.

Key words

• mah ("what?", H4100) — opens the question about the nature of the land, paired with the article-marked adjective that follows.
• shemenah ("fat", H8082) — feminine adjective describing 'aretz ("land", H0776G), the first term of a binary alternative with razah ("lean", H7330).
• 'im ("or", H0518A) — used twice, each time linking two opposite terms in a "is it X or Y?" question pattern, not its more common conditional sense "if."
• hitchazaktem ("you will show yourselves strong", H2388G) — hithpael (reflexive) sequential perfect; grammatically continues the narrative chain but functions with directive force after the string of questions.
• yemei bikkurei 'anavim ("days of firstfruits of grapes", H3117G/H1061/H6025) — a chain of construct nouns forming a compact temporal label for the season.

What the text says

The Hebrew presents two parallel interrogative pairs built on the same pattern: an interrogative particle (ha, H9008) attached to an adjective or noun, followed by 'im ("or") introducing the opposite term. First: "is the land fat (shemenah) or ('im) lean (razah)?" Second: "is there (yesh, H3426) in it wood/trees ('etz, H6086H) or ('im) not ('ayin, H0369)?" This double alternative structure packs two full yes/no questions into a tight syntactic frame not easily reproduced in translation, since English or Spanish must spell out "is it A or is it B" where Hebrew reuses the same particles economically.

After the questions, the vav-prefixed sequential perfects hitchazaktem and u-leqachtem ("and you will take", H3947J) continue the verbal chain begun implicitly by the preceding imperatives in the wider passage; sequential perfect forms following commands commonly carry directive force in Biblical Hebrew narrative syntax, so the shift from interrogative to sequential-perfect is a grammatical device linking inquiry to instruction without a new imperative form.

The final clause, ve-hayyamim yemei bikkurei 'anavim ("and the days were the days of the firstfruits of grapes"), is a nominal (verbless) clause — a parenthetical time-marker inserted into the narrative, identified by construct-chain nouns rather than a finite verb.

Differences between versions

The LXX and Vulgate for this verse include material about cities and walls (πόλεις, τειχήρεσιν; urbes, muratae) that does not appear among the Hebrew words listed for verse 20, which concern only the land's fertility and wood. This indicates a difference in verse content/division between the Hebrew textual unit given and the Greek/Latin renderings at this point, rather than a translation choice within the same wording.