Numbers 14:41

Summary

Moses responds to the people with a rhetorical question, asking why they are transgressing Yehovah's command, and follows with a declaration that their action will not succeed.

Key words

• la.mah zeh ("why this", H4100 + H2088) — the interrogative mah combined with the demonstrative zeh intensifies the question, producing an emphatic "why is it that..." rather than a simple "why."
• 'overim ("transgressing", H5674D) — a qal participle, masculine plural, describing the people not as having transgressed once but as being in the ongoing state/act of transgressing.
• pi Yehovah ("mouth of Yehovah", H6310I + H3068G) — a construct noun phrase, literally "the mouth of Yehovah," used idiomatically for a spoken command; the construct form links the noun pi directly to the divine name.
• hiv' ("it/she", H1931) — an independent personal pronoun, feminine, resuming the previous clause (the action of transgressing) as the subject of the following negative statement.
• titzlach ("it will succeed", H6743B) — a qal imperfect, feminine singular, denoting an action not yet completed or a general/future condition — here negated to state that the undertaking will not prosper.

What the text says

The verse opens with the narrative va-yomer ("and he said," H0559), typical of Hebrew narrative sequencing, introducing Moses as speaker. The core of his speech is a rhetorical question built on la.mah zeh ("why is it that," H4100 + H2088), which the data marks as an emphatic interrogative construction — the addition of zeh to the plain mah sharpens the question beyond a neutral inquiry.

The object of the question is expressed through the participle 'overim ("transgressing," H5674D), a qal masculine plural form. As a participle, it presents the people's action as a continuous or characteristic state rather than a single completed event — they are depicted as being "in the act of" transgressing. The phrase 'et-pi Yehovah uses the direct object marker 'et (H0853, untranslated) followed by the construct phrase pi Yehovah ("mouth of Yehovah," H6310I + H3068G), an idiom in which "mouth" stands for spoken instruction or command.

The second half of the verse shifts to a new clause introduced by the conjunction ve ("and," H9002) and the independent pronoun hiv' ("it/she," H1931), which grammatically resumes the prior action as its subject. The negation lo' (H3808) plus the qal imperfect titzlach ("it will succeed," H6743B) forms a negative statement about outcome — the imperfect aspect indicating an action viewed as incomplete, future, or general rather than a fixed past fact.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders pi Yehovah ("mouth of Yehovah") as τὸ ῥῆμα Κυρίου ("the word/statement of the Lord"), replacing the Hebrew's bodily idiom ("mouth") with the abstract noun "word." The Vulgate similarly uses "verbum Domini" ("the word of the Lord"), matching the LXX's abstraction rather than the Hebrew's idiomatic construct phrase.