Numbers 14:12

Summary

This verse records the divine threat to strike the people with pestilence and dispossess them, replacing them with a new, greater nation formed from Moses himself. The speech uses first-person causative verbs to express YHWH's proposed action against "it" (the people, referenced with singular suffixes) and his alternative plan for Moses.

Key words

• 'akKennu ("I will strike it", H5221) — hiphil imperfect (causative "I will make [it] be struck"), first person, with third-person singular suffix -nu referring to the people as a collective unit.
• 'oriShennu ("I will dispossess it", H3423H) — hiphil imperfect prefixed with ve-, marking a continuing or resulting action following the strike; same singular suffix as above.
• 'e'eSeh ("I may make", H6213H) — qal imperfect with ve-, shifting from causative (hiphil) to simple (qal) stem, introducing the constructive counterpart to the preceding destructive verbs.
• lekha (within 'otekha, "you", H9031) — second-person masculine singular suffix, addressed to Moses alone, not to a group.
• mimMennu ("more than it", H4480A + H9033) — preposition with the same third-person singular suffix used earlier for "the people," creating a formal echo between the nation being destroyed and the one exceeding it.

What the text says

The verse is built on a chain of three first-person imperfect verbs — 'akKennu, 'oriShennu, 'e'eSeh — each carrying a pronominal suffix or object marker that ties the action to a single referent. The first two verbs are hiphil (causative), describing the striking and dispossessing of "it," a singular form that grammatically treats the people as one collective entity rather than as plural individuals. The third verb shifts to qal and introduces a new object, 'otekha ("you," singular, referring to Moses), marked by the direct object particle 'oto (H0853) with the second-person suffix.

The resulting nation is described with two adjectives, gadol ("great", H1419A) and 'atzum ("mighty", H6099), followed by the comparative preposition mimMennu ("more than it/him"). This creates a grammatical parallel: the same suffix -nu used for "the people" struck in the opening clause reappears at the end to mark what the new nation will exceed, linking the destroyed group and the point of comparison through identical pronominal morphology.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the object of striking as plural (αὐτούς, "them") rather than matching the Hebrew singular suffix on 'akKennu and 'oriShennu. The LXX also adds καὶ τὸν οἶκον τοῦ πατρός σου ("and your father's house") to the recipient of the promise, an addition not present in the Hebrew, which addresses only 'otekha ("you", singular, Moses). The Vulgate renders 'e'eseh 'otekha le-goy as "te faciam principem super gentem" ("I will make you a prince over the nation"), differing from the Hebrew construction where Moses himself becomes the nation (le-goy, "into a nation") rather than being placed as ruler over one.