Numbers 15:36

Summary

The verse narrates the execution of the man previously mentioned in Numbers 15 (the one found gathering wood on the Sabbath): the whole community leads him outside the camp and stones him to death, an action explicitly framed as fulfilling a command Yehovah had given to Moses.

Key words

• yotzi'u ("they brought out", H3318H) — hiphil (causative) narrative form: the congregation causes him to go out, rather than him going out on his own.
• edah ("congregation", H5712) — feminine singular noun, the collective subject acting as one body throughout the verse.
• yirgemu ("they stoned", H7275) — qal narrative verb, a plain, non-intensive action verb describing the direct act of stoning.
• avanim ("stones", H0068G) — feminine plural noun, the instrument marked by the preposition ba ("with the").
• tzivvah ("he had commanded", H6680) — piel perfect: an intensive/factitive verbal stem indicating a formal, completed act of command, prior to and governing the narrated events.

What the text says

The sentence is built as a chain of three narrative (vav-consecutive) verbs — yotzi'u ("they brought out"), yirgemu ("they stoned"), yamot ("he died", H4191) — each introduced by the narrative va (H9001), producing a tight sequence: bringing out, stoning, dying. The subject of the first two verbs is kol ha'edah ("all the congregation", H3605/H5712), a singular collective noun used with plural verb forms, emphasizing communal, unified action rather than isolated individuals performing the deed.

The location is marked twice through prepositional phrases: el-michutz lamachaneh ("to outside of the camp", H0413/H9006/H2351/H4264), specifying that the stoning occurs away from the camp's space. The final clause anchors the entire action in prior authority: ka'asher tzivvah Yehovah et-Mosheh ("just as Yehovah had commanded Moses"), using the piel perfect tzivvah to mark a completed command already established before this narrated moment — the congregation's action is presented as executing that earlier instruction, not improvising it.

Differences between versions

The LXX repeats the phrase "ἔξω τῆς παρεμβολῆς" ("outside the camp") twice — once for the leading-out and once for the stoning — where the Hebrew states the location once, attached to the first verb only. The LXX also repeats "πᾶσα ἡ συναγωγή" ("the whole congregation") as the explicit subject of both the leading-out and the stoning, using a singular verb (ἐλιθοβόλησεν) with this collective subject, matching the Hebrew's grammatical number pattern.

The Vulgate condenses the action: it does not explicitly name "the congregation" as subject (using an unspecified plural "eduxissent," "obruerunt"), omits repetition of "outside the camp," and its closing clause "sicut praeceperat Dominus" ("as the Lord had commanded") does not include "Moses" (Mosheh, H4872) as the recipient of the command, unlike the Hebrew's et-Mosheh.