Numbers 14:18

Summary

Numbers 14:18 presents a formal description of Yehovah's character, listing qualities such as patience, covenant loyalty, and forgiveness, while also affirming that guilt is not left unaddressed and that consequences extend across generations. The verse combines construct adjective phrases, active participles, and a distinctive doubled-verb construction for emphasis.

Key words

• 'Erekh ("long of", H0750) — masculine singular construct adjective; forms a bound phrase with the following noun, literally "long of anger[s]."
• 'Appayim ("angers", H0639G) — masculine dual noun; the dual form (rather than singular or plural) is grammatically notable, though the gloss renders it as "anger."
• naqqeh ("certainly leave unpunished", H5352) — piel infinitive absolute; this form has no subject or tense on its own and functions to intensify the finite verb that follows.
• yenaqqeh ("he will leave unpunished", H5352) — piel imperfect, third person; paired with the infinitive absolute of the same root, producing an emphatic construction.
• poqed ("visiting", H6485I) — qal participle, masculine singular; describes an ongoing or characteristic action rather than a single completed event.

What the text says

The verse opens with two parallel construct-adjective phrases describing Yehovah: 'erekh ("long of") 'appayim ("angers") and rav ("great of") chesed ("covenant loyalty"). Both use the construct form, meaning "long of X" and "great of X," a common Hebrew way of forming descriptive attributes through noun pairs rather than simple adjectives. The dual form of 'appayim is a grammatical feature not visible in most translations, which render it as a singular abstract noun ("anger").

The clause nosé ("forgiving") 'avon ("iniquity") va-fasha' ("and transgression") uses a qal participle, presenting forgiveness as a continuing characteristic rather than a one-time act.

The central grammatical feature of the verse is the sequence naqqeh lo' yenaqqeh — an infinitive absolute followed by a negated finite verb of the same root (naqqeh / yenaqqeh, both from H5352). This doubling is a Hebrew intensifying construction: repeating the verb root emphasizes the certainty of the action (or, here, its negation), producing a meaning stronger than the finite verb alone would convey — something like "he will surely not leave unpunished."

The final clause uses the qal participle poqed ("visiting") followed by a construct chain, 'avon 'avot ("iniquity of fathers"), and a sequence of prepositional phrases each introduced by 'al ("on/upon"): "on children, on a third generation, on a fourth generation." The repetition of 'al before each generational noun creates a layered, cumulative structure in the Hebrew.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders 'erekh 'appayim with the single adjective μακρόθυμος ("patient"), not reflecting the dual form of 'appayim, and adds καὶ ἀληθινός ("and true"), a qualifier not present in the Hebrew text. The Vulgate similarly uses the singular "patiens."

For the infinitive-absolute construction naqqeh lo' yenaqqeh, the LXX uses a noun-plus-verb pairing (καθαρισμῷ οὐ καθαριεῖ, "with cleansing he will not cleanse"), preserving a doubled-root effect similar to the Hebrew. The Vulgate instead uses a participial clause, "nullumque innoxium derelinquens" ("leaving no one unpunished"), which restructures the emphatic verb repetition into a different syntactic form.

For the generational listing, the LXX uses ἕως ("until") governing "third and fourth," while the Hebrew repeats the preposition 'al ("on") before each generational term, producing a more layered structure than the LXX's single "until" phrase.