Numbers 14:8

Summary

The verse expresses a conditional statement introduced by 'im ("if", H0518A): if Yehovah delights in the people, he will bring them into the land and give it to them. The land is then described through a relative clause as one flowing with milk and honey.

Key words

• cha.Fetz ("he delights", H2654A) — qal perfect, a completed/stative action denoting Yehovah's favorable disposition; the perfect form after 'im frames the condition.
• he.Vi' ("he will bring", H0935P) — hiphil (causative) sequential perfect; the causative stem indicates Yehovah actively causing the people's entry, not merely their arrival.
• ne.ta.Na ("he will give", H5414G) — qal sequential perfect with 3rd feminine singular suffix -ah ("her/it") referring back to 'A.retz ("land", H0776G); continues the chain of consequence begun by he.Vi'.
• za.Vat ("flowing of", H2100G) — qal participle, feminine singular construct; construct form links it directly to cha.Lav ("milk", H2461) and de.Vash ("honey", H1706), producing the fixed phrase "flowing of milk and honey."
• hi' ("it/she", H1931) — personal pronoun resuming 'E.retz ("a land", H0776G) at the head of the relative clause, marking the land as the subject of the description that follows.

What the text says

The sentence is built as a conditional chain: the particle 'im ("if", H0518A) opens the protasis with cha.Fetz ("he delights", H2654A), a qal perfect verb whose subject Yehovah (H3068G) follows the verb — a common word order in Biblical Hebrew for emphasis on the verbal action itself. The prepositional phrase ba.nu ("in us", H9003+H9035) specifies the object of Yehovah's favorable disposition.

The apodosis unfolds through two sequential perfect verbs joined by the narrative vav (H9001): he.Vi' ("he will bring", H0935P), in the hiphil stem, and ne.ta.Na ("he will give", H5414G), in the qal stem. The hiphil of the first verb marks a causative action — Yehovah causing the people to enter — while the qal of the second is a simple transfer of possession. Both actions are directed toward 'A.retz ha.Zot ("this land", H0776G + H2063), marked by the object marker 'o.Ta (H0853) and the demonstrative Zot.

The final clause shifts to a new noun, 'E.retz ("a land", H0776G, indefinite here, without the article), introduced by the relative particle 'a.Sher ("which", H0834A) and resumed by the pronoun hi' ("it", H1931). The predicate uses the participle za.Vat ("flowing of", H2100G) in construct with cha.Lav ("milk") and de.Vash ("honey"), a construction that describes an ongoing characteristic of the land rather than a one-time event.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders cha.Fetz ("he delights", H2654A) with αἱρετίζει ("chooses/prefers"), shifting the semantic field from delight/pleasure toward selection. The Vulgate uses propitius fuerit ("shall have been favorable"), closer to the Hebrew sense of favorable disposition. The LXX also restructures the syntax, placing εἰσάξει ("he will bring in") and δώσει ("he will give") without the same conditional-consecutive chain marked by the Hebrew vav sequential perfects, presenting the actions as more independent future statements.