Numbers 14:38

Summary

The verse names Joshua son of Nun and Caleb son of Jephunneh as having survived from among the men who had gone to spy out the land. The Hebrew states this through a perfect verb "they lived" followed by a partitive phrase identifying the group from which these two are set apart.

Key words

• cha.Yu ("they lived", H2421) — qal perfect, 3rd person plural; marks a completed state, "they lived/remained alive," the main predicate of the sentence.
• min- ("of/from", H4480A) — preposition with partitive function, indicating that Joshua and Caleb are drawn out from a larger group ("from among those men").
• ho.le.Khim ("went", H1980G) — qal active participle, masculine plural; describes the men as those going (durative/characterizing sense), not simply "had gone."
• Tur ("spy out", H8446) — qal infinitive, expressing purpose after the preposition la ("to"): "to spy out."
• bin- / ben- ("son of", H1121A) — construct noun forms linking each name to its father, structuring the two personal identifications in parallel.

What the text says

The sentence opens with the two subjects fronted before the verb: vi.ho.Shu.a' bin-Nun ve.kha.Lev ben-Ye.fu.Neh — "and Joshua son of Nun, and Caleb son of Jephunneh." Only after both names are given does the verb cha.Yu ("they lived") appear, so the grammatical weight falls on identifying who survived before stating that they survived. The verb is a qal perfect, presenting the survival as a completed fact rather than an ongoing process.

The phrase that follows, min-ha.'a.na.Shim ha.Hem ("from those men"), uses the preposition min- partitively: Joshua and Caleb are extracted from a defined set, "those men." This set is further specified by the participial clause ha.ho.le.Khim la.Tur 'et-ha.'A.retz ("the ones going to spy out the land"). The participle ho.le.Khim is durative in form, describing the men in terms of their ongoing role as scouts rather than a completed past action; the following infinitive Tur with the preposition la expresses the purpose of that going — "to spy out the land." The direct object marker 'et before ha.'A.retz ("the land") marks the land as the grammatical object of the spying.

Differences between versions

The Vulgate renders the participle ho.le.Khim with a pluperfect, perrexerant ("had gone"), presenting the scouting as a completed prior event rather than the Hebrew's descriptive participle "the ones going." The Vulgate also adds omnibus ("of all who had gone"), a totalizing word not present in the Hebrew partitive phrase min-ha.'a.na.Shim ha.Hem ("from those men"). The LXX uses the participle τῶν πεπορευμένων ("those who had gone"), a perfect participle, which similarly frames the scouting as antecedent to the survival, closer to the Vulgate's temporal sense than to the Hebrew's descriptive participle.