Numbers 14:45

Summary

This verse describes the Amalekites and Canaanites, who inhabited a certain hill country, coming down to attack the Israelites. Using two distinct verbs, the text reports that they struck the Israelites and then crushed/pursued them as far as Hormah.

Key words

• va-Yered ("and he came down", H3381) — qal narrative verb in the singular, though it governs two grammatical subjects (Amalekite and Canaanite), treating them as one collective agent of the action.
• ha-Yoshev ("the one dwelling", H3427) — qal participle, masculine singular, describing the Canaanite's ongoing state of habitation in the hill country rather than a completed action.
• va-yaKu ("and they struck them", H5221) — hiphil (causative) narrative verb, third person plural, with pronominal suffix "them"; hiphil stem indicates that the subjects caused the striking to happen to the Israelites.
• va-yakeTum ("and they crushed/scattered them", H3807) — hiphil narrative verb, third person plural, again with the suffix "them"; a distinct root from the previous verb, intensifying the action beyond mere striking.
• Chormah ("Hormah", H2767) — proper noun marking the place name that gives the geographic endpoint of the pursuit, preceded by the preposition 'ad ("to", H5704).

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence opens with a singular verb, va-Yered ("he came down"), even though its subject is compound — "the Amalekite and the Canaanite" — a common construction in Biblical Hebrew where a singular verb can govern a plural or compound subject when the actors are conceived as a unified group. The participle ha-Yoshev ("the one dwelling") functions adjectivally, identifying which Canaanite group is meant: specifically those inhabiting "that hill country" (ba-Har ha-Hu).

The narrative then uses two consecutive hiphil verbs — va-yaKu ("they struck them") and va-yakeTum ("they crushed/scattered them") — both attached to pronominal suffixes meaning "them" (the Israelites, implied from the preceding narrative context). The use of two separate verbal roots for the attack, rather than one, suggests two stages or intensities of the assault: first a striking, then a further crushing or scattering action, extending geographically "to Hormah" ('ad ha-Chormah).

Differences between versions

The LXX adds a clause absent from the Hebrew: καὶ ἀπεστράφησαν εἰς τὴν παρεμβολήν ("and they returned to the camp"), which has no counterpart in the Hebrew text provided. The LXX also renders the two Hebrew verbs (va-yaKu, va-yakeTum) with ἐτρέψαντο ("they routed/turned") and κατέκοψαν ("they cut down"), differing somewhat in nuance from "struck" and "crushed/scattered." The Vulgate collapses the two plural Hebrew verbs into a singular subject construction ("percutiens... persecutus est," "striking... he pursued"), shifting the grammatical number from the Hebrew's plural actors to a more singular narrative voice.