Numbers 14:6
וִיהוֹשֻׁעַ בִּן־נוּן וְכָלֵב בֶּן־יְפֻנֶּה מִן־הַתָּרִים אֶת־הָאָרֶץ קָרְעוּ בִּגְדֵיהֶֽם׃
✦ Hebrew interlinear
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✦ The same verse in five languages
וִיהוֹשֻׁ֣עַ בִּן־נ֗וּן וְכָלֵב֙ בֶּן־יְפֻנֶּ֔ה מִן־הַתָּרִ֖ים אֶת־הָאָ֑רֶץ קָרְע֖וּ בִּגְדֵיהֶֽם׃
Ἰησοῦς δὲ ὁ τοῦ Ναυὴ καὶ Χαλὲβ ὁ τοῦ Ἰεφοννὴ τῶν κατασκεψαμένων τὴν γῆν διέρρηξαν τὰ ἱμάτια αὐτῶν,
Greek text from Swete's edition, CC BY-SA 4.0
Latin (Vulgate)
At vero Josue filius Nun et Caleb filius Jephone, qui et ipsi lustraverant terram, sciderunt vestimenta sua,
Josué, hijo de Nun, y Caleb, hijo de Jefone, que eran de los que espiaron la tierra, se rasgaron la ropa.
Classic Spanish (Reina-Valera 1909)
Y Josué hijo de Nun, y Caleb hijo de Jephone, que eran de los que habían reconocido la tierra, rompieron sus vestidos;
Joshua son of Nun and Caleb son of Jephunneh, who were among those who had spied out the land, tore their clothes
✦ What the text says
Summary
The verse names two of the men who had scouted the land of Canaan — Joshua son of Nun and Caleb son of Jephunneh — and reports that they tore their garments, a physical act typically associated with distress or protest.
Key words
ho.Shu.a' ("Joshua", H3091G) — proper name, subject of the sentence, identified by patronymic construction.
bin- ("[the] son of", H1121A) — masculine singular construct noun linking Joshua to his father Nun; the construct state requires the following name to complete its meaning.
ta.Rim ("[who] spied out", H8446) — qal participle, masculine plural, functioning as a substantive ("the ones who spied"); the participle marks an ongoing or characterizing role rather than a single completed act.
ka.re.'U ("they tore", H7167) — qal perfect, third person plural, expressing a completed action performed jointly by the two named men.
big.dei. ("clothes of", H0899B) — masculine plural construct noun, "garments of," joined to the pronominal suffix Hem ("their", H9028) to form "their garments," the direct object of the tearing.
What the text says
The verse opens with two names joined by the conjunction vi. ("and", H9002) repeated before each figure (vi. before Joshua, ve. before Caleb), giving the sentence a paired-subject structure: "And Joshua son of Nun and Caleb son of Jephunneh." Each name is qualified by a patronymic construct phrase (bin-Nun, ben-Yefunneh), a standard way in Biblical Hebrew to identify a person through his father.
The phrase min-ha.ta.Rim 'et-ha.'A.retz ("one of those who spied out the land") uses the preposition min- ("one of", H4480A) followed by the article and the participle ta.Rim, a form describing them by function — those engaged in scouting — rather than naming a single finished event. The direct object marker 'et- (H0853) introduces ha.'A.retz ("the land", H0776G) as the object of the spying, but the marker itself carries no independent translation value.
The main verb of the sentence, ka.re.'U ("they tore", H7167), is a qal perfect describing a completed, shared action by both men together. Its object, big.dei.Hem ("their clothes"), is formed by a construct noun plus pronominal suffix, a typical Hebrew way of expressing possession without a separate possessive word. The verb’s plural form matches the compound subject "Joshua and Caleb," confirming they acted together as a single grammatical unit performing the tearing.
Differences between versions
The LXX renders the Hebrew participle ta.Rim ("those who spied out") with the participle κατασκεψαμένων ("having spied out"), a form emphasizing completed reconnaissance rather than an ongoing role as in the Hebrew participle. The Vulgate uses lustraverant ("had surveyed"), a pluperfect verb, giving the phrase a stronger sense of an action already finished before the main clause, differing from the Hebrew's participial, descriptive construction.
This explanation describes the text using linguistic data; it adds no doctrine or confessional interpretation.