Numbers 16:34

Summary

The verse reports that all the Israelites positioned around the site of the rebellion fled at the sound arising from it, explaining their flight through their own words: they feared the earth might swallow them too, as had just happened to others.

Key words

• sevivoteihem ("around them", H5439G) — feminine plural construct noun with 3mp suffix; positions the fleeing crowd spatially in relation to the event, not to Moses or Aaron.
• qolam ("their voice", H6963A) — masculine singular construct noun with 3mp suffix; the referent of "their" is not specified in the Hebrew — it could be the cry of those being swallowed or a general commotion.
• na su ("they fled", H5127) — qal perfect 3cp; marks completed action, a straightforward report that the fleeing had already occurred.
• tivla'enu ("it should swallow us", H1104) — qal imperfect 3fs with 1cp suffix; imperfect aspect expresses feared future action, governed by the particle pen.
• pen ("lest", H6435) — subordinating particle introducing a negative purpose/fear clause, structuring the reported speech as an anxiety rather than a statement of fact.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence divides into two parts joined by ki ("for", H3588A): first a narrative report (all Israel around them fled to/at their voice), then the reported reason for the flight (they said: lest the earth swallow us). The construct chain kol Yisra'el asher sevivoteihem identifies the fleeing group only by spatial proximity to the event — the text does not specify who exactly "them" refers to beyond that proximity.

The phrase lecolam ("to their voice") uses the preposition le (H9005) with qol, but the referent of the pronominal "their" is left ambiguous in the Hebrew: it could point to the voice/cry of those being swallowed by the earth, or to some other group mentioned earlier in the chapter. The verb na su ("they fled") is a qal perfect, presenting the flight as a completed event, while the embedded fear clause introduced by pen + qal imperfect tivla'enu keeps the danger framed as ongoing or potential ("lest it swallow us"), matching the standard grammatical function of pen-clauses to express apprehension about future action.

Differences between versions

The Vulgate renders the ambiguous qolam ("their voice") as clamorem pereuntium ("the cry of those perishing"), explicitly identifying the voice as belonging to the dying, an interpretive specification not present in the Hebrous noun construct itself. The LXX renders ki 'ameru ("for they said") with hoti legontes ("because saying"), using a participle where the Hebrew has a finite perfect verb, which shifts the reported speech into looser apposition rather than a discrete clause of speech.