Numbers 16:11

Summary

Numbers 16:11 records Moses' rhetorical accusation against Korah and his company: their true grievance is a rebellion against Yehovah himself, not against Aaron. The verse poses two connected rhetorical questions — one declarative ("you are the ones gathered against Yehovah"), one interrogative ("what is Aaron, that you murmur against him?").

Key words

• la·khen ("therefore", H3651C) — introduces the verse as a conclusion drawn from what precedes, marking Moses' accusatory logic.
• 'adatekha ("your company", H5712, construct + suffix) — construct noun bound to the 2nd person suffix, identifying the group as belonging to the addressee (Korah), not to Moses or Aaron.
• hanno'adim ("the ones gathered", H3259, niphal participle) — the niphal stem marks a passive or reflexive gathering; the group is presented as having assembled itself (or been assembled) against Yehovah, not merely present.
• mah-hu ("what is he", H4100 + H1931) — an interrogative pronoun combined with the personal pronoun, forming a fixed rhetorical formula that questions status or significance rather than identity.
• talinu ("you will cause to grumble", H3885B, hiphil imperfect) — the hiphil (causative) stem of the root for "murmur/spend the night" indicates not simple complaining but an action that produces or incites grumbling; the imperfect aspect frames it as ongoing or repeated.

What the text says

The sentence divides into two clauses joined by ki ("that/because", H3588A). The first clause, introduced by la·khen, has no verb of its own in Hebrew — it relies on the participle hanno'adim functioning predicatively: "you and all your company [are] the ones gathered against Yehovah." This niphal participle construction shifts the emphasis from what Korah's group is doing to what they have made themselves into — a body assembled in opposition to Yehovah, using the preposition 'al ("against/upon", H5921A).

The second clause pivots to Aaron with the compact idiom mah-hu ("what is he"), which does not ask for Aaron's identity but challenges his relevance to the complaint — implying the real target of the grumbling is misdirected. The causative hiphil verb talinu is significant: rather than saying "you murmur," the Hebrew text frames the action as causing murmuring, suggesting an active production of discontent rather than a passive expression of it. The final word 'alav ("against him", H5921A + suffix) closes the parallel with 'al Yehovah in the first clause, reinforcing that Aaron is being treated as a secondary object of complaint that properly belongs to Yehovah.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders 'al Yehovah ("against Yehovah") as πρὸς τὸν θεόν ("against God"), replacing the divine name with a generic title. The Vulgate diverges more substantially, rendering the first clause as a question, "stet contra Dominum" ("does [your company] stand against the Lord?"), whereas the Hebrew presents this as a flat declarative statement using the participle hanno'adim. The causative force of the hiphil talinu ("cause to murmur") is not distinguished in the LXX (γογγύζετε, "you murmur") or the Vulgate (murmuretis, "you murmur"), both of which render it as a simple verb of complaining rather than a causative one.