Numbers 15:32

Summary

Numbers 15:32 narrates an incident during Israel's time in the wilderness: the Israelites find a man in the act of gathering wood on the Sabbath day. The verse sets up a legal case that the following verses will resolve.

Key words

• va-yihyu ("and they were", H1961) — qal narrative form of the verb "to be," opening the scene with a simple past-sequential construction typical of Hebrew narrative chains.
• bene-Yisra'el ("sons/people of Israel", H1121G) — construct form linking "sons" to "Israel," the standard designation for the Israelite community as a collective.
• va-yimtze'u ("and they found", H4672) — qal narrative verb continuing the story sequence, indicating the discovery is presented as a single narrated event.
• meqoshesh ("gathering", H7197A) — piel participle, masculine singular, describing the man's action as intensive or repeated activity ("the one gathering"), used here as a descriptive label rather than a finite verb — it characterizes the man at the moment he is found.
• ha-Shabbat ("the sabbath", H7676) — definite noun marking the specific day, feminine singular, the temporal anchor of the entire episode.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built from two narrative clauses joined by the vav-consecutive construction (va-yihyu ... va-yimtze'u), a hallmark of Biblical Hebrew storytelling that presents events as a sequence: first the Israelites "were" in the wilderness (ba-midbar, H4057B), then they "found" (va-yimtze'u) a man. The object of the finding, 'ish ("a man", H0376G), is immediately qualified by the participle meqoshesh ("gathering," H7197A), a piel form that in Hebrew participial syntax functions almost like an English present-participle clause — "a man gathering wood" — capturing him in the ongoing act rather than stating that he had already gathered and finished. The piel stem here intensifies the verbal idea of collecting, distinguishing it from a simple qal action of picking up a single item.

The temporal phrase be-yom ha-Shabbat ("on the day of the sabbath") closes the verse, using the construct chain yom + ha-Shabbat ("day of the sabbath") to specify precisely when the act occurred. The construct relationship between yom and ha-Shabbat pins the action to that particular day rather than any day in general, which is significant for the narrative since the day's identity becomes the substance of the case introduced in this verse.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders meqoshesh with the participle syllegonta ("gathering together"), matching the durative sense of the Hebrew piel participle. The Vulgate uses colligentem ("gathering"), similarly participial. The Spanish SBLIBRE and English BSB render ha-Shabbat as "día de descanso" / "Sabbath day," both preserving the specific day-reference of the Hebrew construct phrase, though "día de descanso" ("day of rest") shifts slightly toward a descriptive translation rather than a transliteration of the proper term "Sabbath" used in RV1909 and BSB.