Numbers 14:30

Summary

Yehovah declares that the generation being addressed will not enter the land which he swore by oath to give them, with the sole exceptions of Caleb son of Jephunneh and Joshua son of Nun. The Hebrew constructs this as a formal oath statement rather than a simple negative sentence.

Key words

• 'im ("if", H0518H) — opens a conditional/oath clause; in Hebrew oath formulas, "if you will enter" functions elliptically as a self-imprecation, implying "you will certainly not enter," even though no negative particle appears.
• ta.Vo.'u ("you will go/enter", H0935G) — qal imperfect, 2nd person masculine plural, marking the future/ongoing action placed under the oath's condition.
• na.Sa.ti ("I lifted up", H5375P) — qal perfect, 1st person, paired with yad ("hand", H3027S) in the idiom "to lift the hand," a standard Hebrew expression for swearing an oath.
• ki 'im ("except", H3588B + H0518B) — a compound particle combination functioning as an exceptive marker, singling out Caleb and Joshua from the preceding statement.
• sha.Ken ("to cause to dwell", H7931) — piel infinitive, intensive/causative sense, expressing the purpose of the oath: to settle the people in the land.

What the text says

The verse opens with 'im attached to a finite verb (ta.Vo.'u), a construction that in Biblical Hebrew oath language does not function as a normal conditional "if" but as the protasis of a suppressed self-curse: the implied apodosis ("may such-and-such happen to me") is omitted, and the whole clause carries a strong negative force — "you will surely not enter." This is why translations without access to the underlying Hebrew idiom render it as an outright negation ("you will not enter," "none of you will enter") even though the Hebrew text itself contains no direct negative particle here.

The phrase na.Sa.ti et yadi ("I lifted up my hand") is an idiomatic way of referring to oath-swearing, with yad ("hand", H3027S) in construct form governed by the 1st-person suffix -i ("my"). The purpose clause that follows, introduced by the preposition le ("to", H9005) plus the infinitive sha.Ken, expresses the intended outcome of that oath: causing the people "to dwell" in the land.

The exception is introduced by the double particle ki 'im, literally "that if," which functions together as "except" or "but only," carving out Caleb and Joshua as the two named exceptions to the otherwise universal exclusion announced in the oath.

Differences between versions

The Vulgate renders the sentence with an explicit negative — "non intrabitis terram" ("you will not enter the land") — making overt what the Hebrew oath-formula only implies. The LXX uses exeteina ten cheira mou ("I stretched out my hand") for the Hebrew idiom of "lifting the hand," a slightly different physical image for the same oath-swearing sense. The LXX text as given also shows an irregular phrase, huios he kai, in the naming of Caleb, differing from the straightforward "son of Jephunneh" pattern found in the Hebrew and Vulgate.