Numbers 14:5

Summary

Moses and Aaron fall facedown in response to the people's complaints, doing so specifically before the assembled community of Israel. The Hebrew marks this as a public, formal gesture directed toward the entire congregation.

Key words

• va-yippol ("and he fell", H5307) — qal verb with narrative vav, marking the next event in sequence; the singular verb form governs the compound subject "Moses and Aaron."
• penei-hem ("their faces", H6440 + H9028) — construct noun with pronominal suffix, giving the idiom "fell on their faces," i.e., prostration.
• li-fnei ("before", H9005 + H6440) — preposition + construct noun, marking the audience in front of whom the act occurs.
• qehal ("assembly of", H6951) — masculine singular construct, first term in a stacked construct chain.
• 'adat ("congregation of", H5712) — feminine singular construct, second term in the same chain, followed by benei Yisra'el ("sons of Israel", H1121+H3478).

What the text says

The verse opens with the narrative vav on va-yippol, a qal verb in the third-person singular, even though the subject is compound ("Moses and Aaron," H4872 + H175 joined by ve, H9002). This grammatical singular-for-plural agreement is common in Biblical Hebrew when two subjects act as one unit.

The phrase 'al-penei-hem ("on their faces") uses the construct noun penei ("faces," H6440) with a third-person plural suffix, producing the standard idiom for prostration. The text then specifies the location of this act with li-fnei ("before"), a preposition built from the same root panim ("face"), followed by a long construct chain: kol-qehal 'adat benei Yisra'el — literally "all the assembly of the congregation of the sons of Israel." This chain stacks two near-synonymous nouns, qehal (H6951) and 'adat (H5712), both meaning "assembly/congregation," one governing the other in construct relation before reaching the final term "sons of Israel."

Differences between versions

The Hebrew's double construct — qehal and 'adat together — is rendered in the LXX with a single noun, synagoge ("assembly"), and in the Vulgate with a single noun, multitudine ("multitude"). Neither Greek nor Latin reproduces the two-term Hebrew stacking. The Vulgate also opens with Quo audito ("having heard this"), an added temporal clause not present in the Hebrew text, and specifies proni in terram ("prone on the ground"), making explicit what the Hebrew idiom 'al-peneihem implies without stating "ground."