Numbers 14:27

Summary

Numbers 14:27 records YHWH's rhetorical question about the duration of the congregation's complaints, followed by a statement that he has heard the grumblings of the Israelites directed against him. The verse repeats the concept of grumbling twice, framing the community's complaint as a persistent pattern.

Key words

• ma.Tai ("when?", H4970) — interrogative particle forming the question "until when," expressing exasperation at ongoing duration.
• ra.'Ah ("evil", H7451H) — feminine singular adjective modifying 'e.Dah ("congregation"), qualifying the assembly itself as "evil/bad."
• ma.li.Nim ("grumbling", H3885B) — hiphil participle, masculine plural, appearing twice (lines 11 and 20); the participle form presents the grumbling as a continuous, ongoing action rather than a single event.
• te.lu.Not ("grumblings of", H8519) — feminine plural construct noun, linking directly to be.Nei Yis.ra.'El ("sons of Israel") to specify whose complaints are meant.
• sha.Ma.'e.ti ("I have heard", H8085G) — qal perfect, first person, marking completed action; this verb closes the verse, confirming the divine subject has already received the complaints described.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence opens with the phrase 'ad-ma.Tai ("until when"), a common construction for expressing impatience or rhetorical exasperation. This phrase governs a long noun phrase: la.'e.Dah ha.ra.'ah ha.zot ("to/for this evil congregation"), where the article-adjective-demonstrative sequence (ha.'e.Dah, ha.ra.'ah, ha.zot) stacks descriptors onto "congregation," marking it as definite, evil, and specifically "this" one.

The verse then uses a relative clause construction with 'a.Sher ("which") twice, each followed by the pronoun He.mah ("they") and the participle ma.li.Nim ("grumbling"). This repetition — 'a.Sher He.mah ma.li.Nim 'a.Lai appearing in lines 9-12 and again in lines 18-21 — creates a doubling effect in the Hebrew text, describing the same grumbling action against the divine speaker ('a.Lai, "against me") twice before arriving at the main verb sha.Ma.'e.ti ("I have heard"). The direct object marker 'et (H0853) in line 14 signals that te.lu.Not be.nei Yis.ra.'El ("the grumblings of the sons of Israel") is the object of the final verb sha.Ma.'e.ti, syntactically placed at the very end of the sentence.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the double Hebrew relative clause structure ('a.Sher He.mah ma.li.Nim appearing twice) into a single Greek clause using γογγύζουσιν ("they grumble") and ἐγόγγυσαν ("they grumbled," aorist), reducing the Hebrew's repetition into two distinct verb forms rather than mirroring the double participle construction. The Vulgate compresses the passage further into murmurat ("grumbles," singular verb) applied to multitudo ("multitude"), and audivi ("I have heard") governs querelas ("complaints") directly, without preserving the twofold relative-clause repetition present in the Hebrew.