Numbers 16:4

Summary

The verse narrates two consecutive actions by Moses: he heard (something, referring to what precedes in the narrative) and then fell on his face. The Hebrew uses a simple narrative chain of two verbs to convey immediate reaction.

Key words

• va-yishma' ("and he heard", H8085) — qal narrative form with the vav-consecutive construction, marking the first sequential event: "and then he heard."
• Mosheh ("Moses", H4872) — proper name, subject of both verbs in the sentence.
• va-yipol ("and he fell", H5307) — qal narrative form with vav-consecutive, marking the second sequential event: "and then he fell."
• panav ("his face", H6440) — masculine plural noun in construct state with the pronominal suffix -o ("his"), literally "faces of him," idiomatically referring to the face/front of a person.

What the text says

The verse is built on two verbs joined by the narrative vav-consecutive construction (va-yishma'... va-yipol), a standard Biblical Hebrew device for presenting sequential events in past narrative: "and he heard... and he fell." This construction creates a tight cause-and-effect rhythm — the hearing directly precedes and motivates the falling, without any intervening clause or conjunction beyond the narrative vav itself.

The phrase 'al-panav ("on his face") uses the plural noun panim ("face"), which in Hebrew is grammatically always plural even when referring to a single face — a common feature of the language. Here it appears in construct form with the third-person suffix -o, yielding panav, "his face." The preposition 'al ("on/upon") combined with this noun produces the idiomatic expression for falling prostrate, face toward the ground.

The verse does not specify here what Moses heard; that content is established by the preceding narrative context in the chapter, and the verse itself only records his auditory reception of it and his physical reaction.

Differences between versions

The Vulgate adds the adjective pronus ("prone, face-down") to the verb cecidit ("he fell"), making explicit the bodily orientation implied by the Hebrew idiom 'al-panav. The Hebrew and the LXX (ἔπεσεν ἐπὶ πρόσωπον, "he fell upon [his] face") do not use a separate word for "prone"; the posture is conveyed only through the noun "face" governed by the preposition. The LXX also omits the possessive pronoun found in the Hebrew panav ("his face"), rendering simply πρόσωπον ("face") without a possessive marker in this Swete edition text.