Numbers 16:41

Summary

The verse reports that the entire community of the Israelites voiced complaint against Moses and Aaron on the day following the preceding events, accusing them directly of having caused the death of "the people of Yehovah."

Key words

• yillonu ("they grumbled", H3885B) — niphal verb form, giving the grumbling a collective, self-generated quality ("and they grumbled among themselves/rose up in complaint") rather than a simple active verb.
• 'adat ("congregation of", H5712) — construct feminine noun, opening a chain that binds the whole community together as a single grammatical and social unit.
• mimochorat ("from the next day", H4283) — feminine noun with prefixed preposition mi, an idiomatic time marker locating the complaint precisely on the day after.
• hemitem ("you have killed", H4191) — hiphil perfect, second person plural: the causative stem frames the accusation as "you caused [this people] to die," and the perfect aspect marks it as a completed, finished act.
• 'am YHWH ("people of Yehovah", H5971A + H3068G) — construct phrase identifying the dead not merely as Israelites but specifically as belonging to Yehovah, sharpening the accusatory force.

What the text says

The sentence opens with the narrative va-yillonu, the niphal form of "to grumble," followed by a long construct chain — kol-'adat benei-Yisra'el ("all the congregation of the sons of Israel") — that identifies the subject as a unified totality before the verb's action is even resolved into named individuals. This chain places emphasis on collective consensus: it is not a faction but the whole assembly acting together. The time phrase mimochorat ("from the next day") anchors the event immediately following what precedes it in the narrative sequence, using the preposition min in an idiomatic temporal sense ("on the next day").

The accusation itself is introduced by the infinitive lemor ("saying") and consists of a short, direct clause: 'attem hemittem 'et-'am YHWH ("you [pl.] have killed the people of Yehovah"). The independent pronoun 'attem ("you") is placed before the verb for emphasis, stressing that the addressees — Moses and Aaron — are being singled out as responsible agents. The hiphil perfect hemittem casts the action as causative and completed, so the accusation is not simply "you killed" but "you brought about the death of," and treats the outcome as an already-finished fact at the moment of speaking.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew construct chain kol-'adat benei-Yisra'el ("all the congregation of the sons of Israel") is rendered in the LXX simply as οἱ υἱοὶ Ἰσραὴλ ("the sons of Israel"), omitting both "all" (kol) and "congregation" ('adat). The Vulgate retains the totality with "omnis multitudo filiorum Israël" ("all the multitude of the sons of Israel"), translating 'adat as "multitudo" ("multitude") rather than as a more technical term for "congregation."