Numbers 15:16

Summary

Numbers 15:16 states that a single torah ("law") and a single mishpat ("judgment") will apply to the Israelite community and to the ger ("sojourner") who resides among them. The verse closes a section of sacrifice regulations by declaring one common legal standard for both groups.

Key words

• toRah ("a law", H8451) — feminine singular noun, the subject of the sentence, referring to a body of instruction or legal norm.
• 'achat ("one", H0259) — feminine singular numeral in construct form, modifying toRah and asserting its singularity/unity.
• mishPat ("judgment", H4941G) — masculine singular noun, coordinated with toRah by the conjunction u- ("and"), naming a second legal category alongside "law."
• ger ("sojourner", H1616) — masculine singular noun marked with the article ha-, designating the non-native resident.
• gar ("sojourns", H1481A) — qal participle, masculine singular, functioning as a relative clause ("the one who sojourns") attached to ger by the repeated article.

What the text says

The sentence places toRah 'achat ("one law") and u-mishPat 'echad ("and one judgment") as a double compound subject before the verb yihYeh ("it will be/belong", H1961, qal imperfect). The imperfect form gives the statement an ongoing or future-durative sense — the law and judgment will continue to hold, not merely hold on a single past occasion. The predicate is built with the preposition la- ("to") plus the suffix -khem ("you," masculine plural), meaning literally "it will belong to you," and this same prepositional phrase is repeated for the second party: ve-la-ger ("and to the sojourner").

The identity of that second party is specified by a participial construction: ha-ger ha-gar ittekhem — literally "the sojourner, the one sojourning with you." Here the article attached to the qal participle gar ("sojourning") functions like a relative pronoun, producing the sense "who sojourns with you," a common Biblical Hebrew device for forming a descriptive relative clause without a separate relative word. The preposition 'itt- ("with") plus the suffix -khem closes the verse, anchoring the sojourner's presence spatially "with" the addressed community.

Differences between versions

The Vulgate text supplied here (Locutus est Dominus ad Moysen, dicens, "The Lord spoke to Moses, saying") does not correspond to the content of the Hebrew verse 15:16 shown above; it renders introductory speech-formula wording rather than the "one law...one judgment" statement found in the Hebrew, LXX, and modern translations (BSB, RV1909, SBLIBRE), which all closely follow the Hebrew's parallel structure of toRah and mishPat.