Numbers 15:18

Summary

The verse opens a divine instruction to Moses, commanding him to speak to the Israelites and announce a future condition: when they enter the land into which God is bringing them, a further command (given in the following verses) will apply. The sentence sets up a temporal clause anchored by the moment of arrival in the land.

Key words

• daBer ("speak", H1696G) — piel imperative, giving Moses a direct, intensified command to transmit speech, not merely inform.
• 'amarTa ("you will say", H0559) — qal sequential perfect, continuing the imperative chain: after speaking, Moses is to say the following words to the people.
• bo'aKhem ("your coming", H0935G) — qal infinitive construct with pronominal suffix "your," forming the temporal phrase "in your coming," i.e., "when you come."
• meVi' ("[I am] bringing", H0935P) — hiphil participle, causative form indicating an ongoing, agent-driven action: "I am the one bringing," describing God as the active cause of the people's entry into the land.
• Shamah ("there" + directional he, H8033G/H9011) — adverb with directional suffix, marking motion "toward there," reinforcing the destination of the action described by meVi'.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built as a chain of two imperative-style commands: daBer ("speak") followed by the sequential 'amarTa ("and you will say"), a common construction in legal or instructional speech where Moses is told first to address the people, then to deliver a specific message. The message itself begins with a temporal clause introduced by the preposition be- ("when") attached to the infinitive bo'aKhem ("your coming"), meaning "when you come" or "upon your coming."

The clause continues with 'el ha'aretz ("into the land"), followed by a relative clause 'asher 'ani meVi' 'etkhem shamah ("that I am bringing you there"). Here the hiphil participle meVi' casts God as the continuous causative agent of the people's movement into the land, distinguishing this from a simple qal verb like "to come." The directional he attached to Shamah ("there") reinforces the sense of motion toward a specific place, doubling the spatial marking already present in 'el ha'aretz ("into the land").

Differences between versions

The Hebrew text uses the relative clause "the land that I am bringing you there" ('asher 'ani meVi' 'etkhem shamah), employing the hiphil participle meVi' ("bringing"). The Vulgate renders this differently as "the land which I will give to you" (quam dabo vobis), shifting the verb from "bringing" to "giving" and omitting the locative "there." The LXX follows the Hebrew more closely with εἰσάγω ("I bring in"), preserving the causative sense of meVi', and includes the locative ἐκεῖ ("there"), matching Shamah.