Numbers 16:33

Summary

The verse describes the fate of Korah's group and their households: they descended alive into Sheol, the earth closed over them, and they perished from among the assembled community. The Hebrew text uses three consecutive narrative verbs to mark the rapid sequence of events.

Key words

• yeredu ("they went down", H3381) — qal narrative verb, third person masculine plural; marks the first event in the chain, the descent itself.
• chayyim ("alive", H2416A) — masculine plural adjective describing the condition of those who went down: they were not dead when they descended, but living.
• she'olah ("toward Sheol", H7585 + directional he) — the noun for the underworld/pit with a directional suffix, indicating the destination of the descent.
• tekhas ("it covered", H3680) — piel (intensive) narrative verb, third person feminine singular, referring to ha'aretz ("the earth"); the intensive stem stresses a complete, thorough covering.
• yo'vedu ("they perished", H0006) — qal narrative verb, third person masculine plural; the final event in the sequence, following the covering.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built as a chain of three narrative verbs joined by the narrative vav (H9001): yeredu ("they went down"), tekhas ("it covered"), and yo'vedu ("they perished"). This chaining structure presents the events as a sequential unfolding rather than as separate simultaneous statements, each action following the previous one in narrated time.

The subject of the first verb is specified as hem ("they", H1992) together with khol 'asher lahem ("all that belonged to them", H3605 + H0834A + H9005 + H9038), meaning the people themselves and everything associated with them are included as those who go down. The adjective chayyim ("alive", H2416A) modifies this subject, marking that the descent happened while they were still living, before their perishing (yo'vedu) which comes only in the third clause.

The verb tekhas ("it covered", H3680) is in the piel stem, an intensive verbal form, with ha'aretz ("the earth", H0776H + H9009) as its subject and 'aleihem ("over them", H5921A + H9038) as the object phrase, describing the earth's action upon them. The final clause states they perished mittokh haqqahal ("from among the assembly", H9006 + H8432 + H9009 + H6951), using a construct phrase that locates their disappearance in relation to the wider assembled group.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders khol 'asher lahem ("all that belonged to them") as ὅσα ἐστὶν αὐτῶν ("whatever is theirs"), a similar sense to the Hebrew. The Vulgate's descenderuntque vivi in infernum operti humo ("and they descended alive into hell, covered with earth") combines the descent and covering into a single clause with a participle (operti, "covered"), whereas the Hebrew presents these as two separate sequential verbs (yeredu and tekhas).