Numbers 14:3

Summary

The verse records a rhetorical complaint attributed to the people: they ask why YHWH (H3068G) is bringing them into "this land," fearing that they and their families will fall by the sword and become plunder. The verse closes with a second rhetorical question proposing that returning to Egypt would be preferable.

Key words

• me.Vi' ("bringing", H0935P) — hiphil participle, expressing an action presented as ongoing or characteristic ("the one who is bringing"), not a single completed event.
• n.Pol ("fall", H5307J) — qal infinitive with prefixed lamed, marking purpose or result: "so as to fall," linking the act of entering the land to the feared outcome.
• yih.Yu ("they will become", H1961) — qal imperfect, third person masculine plural, describing a future/incomplete state applied to "wives" and "little ones."
• Tov ("good", H2896A) — adjective following the interrogative ha (H9008) and negation Lo' (H3808), forming the rhetorical construction "is it not good."
• shuv ("to return", H7725G) — qal infinitive, paired with the directional suffix -ah on mitz.Ra.ye.ma ("Egypt-ward", H4714G), indicating motion toward a destination.

What the text says

The verse is built from two rhetorical questions joined by an implicit contrast. The first, introduced by la.Mah ("why", H4100) plus the divine name, uses the participle me.Vi' rather than a finite verb, framing the action of "bringing" as a present, ongoing complaint rather than a report of a past act. This participle governs the object marker 'o.Ta-nu ("us", H0853+H9035) and the phrase 'el-ha-'A.retz ha-zoT ("into this land"), followed by the infinitive li-n.Pol ("to fall") expressing the feared purpose or consequence of that bringing—falling ba-Che.rev ("by the sword", H2719).

The next clause shifts subject to na.Shei-nu ve-ta.Pe-nu ("our wives and our little ones"), both construct nouns with first-person plural suffixes, followed by the imperfect yih.Yu ("they will become") and la-Vaz ("into plunder", H0957), stating the anticipated fate of dependents as a future condition rather than a settled fact.

The closing question, marked by the interrogative ha attached to the negation Lo' ("not"), followed by Tov ("good") and the infinitive shuv ("to return") plus the directional form Mitz.rayemah ("toward Egypt"), proposes an alternative course as preferable, using an infinitive construction typical of Hebrew for expressing a course of action under evaluation.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders ba-Che.rev ("by the sword") as ἐν πολέμῳ ("in war"), a broader term than the specific weapon named in the Hebrew. The Vulgate text supplied is considerably longer than the Hebrew of this verse, including material about dying in Egypt and perishing in the wilderness that does not appear in the Hebrew of Numbers 14:3 alone, suggesting the Vulgate excerpt here incorporates content paralleled elsewhere in the complaint (compare Numbers 14:2).