Numbers 14:11

Summary

Yehovah speaks to Moses, posing two rhetorical questions introduced by "until when" ('ad-'anah): how long this people will spurn him, and how long they will fail to believe in him despite all the signs performed in their midst.

Key words

• yena'atzuni ("will they spurn", H5006) — piel imperfect, giving the verb an intensive nuance ("to treat with contempt, provoke"); the imperfect aspect frames the action as ongoing or repeated, not a single past event.
• ya'aminu ("will they believe", H0539) — hiphil imperfect, the causative stem here functioning in the sense "to consider firm/trustworthy," i.e., "to believe"; paired with the negation lo' ("not", H3808) it expresses persistent unbelief.
• 'ad-'anah ("until when", H5704 + H0575) — the interrogative construction repeated twice, structuring the verse as a double rhetorical question and marking the divine speech as an expression of exasperation at duration.
• 'otot ("signs", H0226G) — feminine plural noun, governed by bekhol ("with all", H3605) in construct, emphasizing the totality of the signs performed.
• beqirbo ("in its midst", H7130G + H9023) — construct noun with third-person suffix referring back to ha'am hazzeh ("this people", H5971A + H2088), locating the signs specifically within the community's experience.

What the text says

The verse opens with the narrative formula vayyomer Yehovah 'el-Mosheh ("and Yehovah said to Moses"), a standard introduction to direct divine speech. The content of that speech is built as two parallel questions, each opened by the phrase 'ad-'anah ("until when"). This repetition creates a rhetorical symmetry: the first question addresses an action already occurring (yena'atzuni, piel imperfect, "they spurn me"), and the second addresses an ongoing failure (lo'-ya'aminu, "they do not believe"), both governed by the same temporal interrogative structure.

The subject of both verbs is ha'am hazzeh ("this people, this"), with the demonstrative zeh ("this", H2088) adding a demonstrative and somewhat distancing force, as if singling out the people as an object of frustration rather than addressing them directly. The second question is expanded by a prepositional phrase, bekhol ha'otot 'asher 'asiti beqirbo ("with all the signs which I did in its midst"), where the relative clause 'asher 'asiti ("which I did", qal perfect) marks the signs as a completed and verifiable set of past actions, contrasted with the ongoing unbelief expressed by the imperfect ya'aminu. The suffix -o ("its") on beqirbo refers back grammatically to ha'am ("the people"), reinforcing that the signs occurred within the collective body of this specific group.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders yena'atzuni ("will they spurn me") with paroxynei me ("provokes me"), using a verb of provocation rather than contempt, and translates 'otot ("signs") with sēmeiois ("signs"), a close match. The Vulgate renders the same verb as detrahet ("will detract from, disparage"), a different semantic angle than either "spurn" or "provoke." For beqirbo ("in its midst"), the LXX has en autois ("among them") and the Vulgate coram eis ("before them"), both shifting the Hebrew's singular suffix (referring to "the people" as a collective) into a plural pronoun referring to the people as individuals.