Numbers 15:35

Summary

Yehovah instructs Moses that the man (previously found gathering wood on the Sabbath) must be put to death, specifying the method: the entire congregation is to stone him outside the camp. The verse uses two paired infinitive absolutes to intensify both the death sentence and the stoning act.

Key words

• Mot ("certainly to die", H4191) — infinitive absolute of the same root as the following verb, placed before it to intensify the certainty of the action: "dying, he will be put to death."
• yumat ("he will be put to death", H4191) — hophal (causative-passive) imperfect: the man does not die by his own action but is caused to die by another agent, left unspecified in the verb itself.
• ragom ("it will stone", H7275) — infinitive absolute, again intensifying the following implied finite action of stoning; paired with the object suffix construction that follows.
• 'edah ("congregation", H5712) — feminine singular noun in construct with kol ("all", H3605), designating the collective body as the executing agent.
• machaneh ("camp", H4264) — feminine singular noun governed by mi-chutz la- ("from outside of"), locating the execution outside the community's dwelling space.

What the text says

The verse opens with the narrative va-yomer ("and he said", H0559) introducing direct speech from Yehovah (H3068G) to Mosheh (H4872). The core legal declaration uses two infinitive absolute + finite verb constructions typical of Biblical Hebrew legal/emphatic style: mot yumat ("dying, he will be put to death") and ragom ... oto ("stoning, [they will stone] him"). The first construction pairs a qal infinitive absolute with a hophal imperfect finite verb, which grammatically marks the action as passive and causative — the subject ha-'ish ("the man", H0376G) undergoes death caused by an external, unnamed agent. The second construction, ragom, is also an infinitive absolute, but here the expected finite verb form is not present in the same slot; instead the sentence moves directly to the object marker 'oto ("him", H0853+H9033) and then to the agent kol ha-'edah ("all the congregation"), which functions as the subject carrying out the stoning. The preposition phrase mi-chutz la-machaneh ("from outside of the camp") specifies the location of execution, structurally placed at the very end of the sentence, marking it as the final and separate detail after the identification of the agent.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the divine speech with legon ("saying") after elalesen ("he spoke"), differing from the Hebrew's single verb va-yomer ("and he said"), effectively doubling the introduction of speech. The Vulgate adds iste ("that/this") to homo ("man"), a demonstrative not present as a separate word in the Hebrew ha-'ish ("the man"). The LXX also uses an imperative plural lithobolesate ("stone!") for the congregation's action, while the Hebrew's ragom is an infinitive absolute without an explicit imperative marker in that exact verbal slot.