Numbers 16:48

Summary

The verse describes a man (subject unspecified in this clip, referring back to Aaron in the wider narrative) standing between the dead and the living, after which the plague afflicting the people was stopped. The Hebrew marks this as a turning point in the narrative through consecutive verb forms.

Key words

• va-ya'amod ("he stood", H5975G) — qal narrative form (vav-consecutive), presenting the standing as the next event in the story sequence.
• bein ("between", H0996G) — construct form of a noun functioning as a preposition, used twice to frame the two groups (ha-metim / ha-chayyim) he stands between.
• ha-metim ("the dead", H4191) — qal participle with definite article, literally "the ones who are dying/dead," functioning as a substantive.
• ha-chayyim ("the living", H2416A) — adjective with definite article, substantivized to mean "the living ones," paired antithetically with ha-metim.
• va-te'atsar ("it was restrained", H6113) — niphal (passive) narrative form, feminine, agreeing with ha-maggephah ("the plague") as its subject; the passive voice presents the plague as being halted rather than naming an agent who halts it.

What the text says

The verse has two clauses linked by the narrative vav (H9001), which chains events in sequence: first the standing, then the restraining of the plague. The first clause uses bein...u-bein ("between...and between") to construct a spatial image with two participants marked by the definite article: ha-metim ("the dead," a qal participle used as a noun) and ha-chayyim ("the living," an adjective used as a noun). The word order in the Hebrew presents the dead first, then the living.

The second clause shifts grammatical voice: va-te'atsar is a niphal form, meaning the plague (ha-maggephah, grammatically feminine, matching the feminine verb form) is the subject that "was restrained," not the object of someone's action stated in the verb itself. The Hebrew does not specify who or what caused the restraining within this clause; that agency, if present, would need to be inferred from surrounding context not included in this passage.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew order is "between the dead and the living" (metim... chayyim), which the LXX preserves (τῶν τεθνηκότων καὶ τῶν ζώντων, "the dead and the living"). The BSB reverses this to "between the living and the dead," an inversion not present in the Hebrew or LXX word order.

The Vulgate adds a clause absent from the Hebrew and LXX as given: "pro populo deprecatus est" ("he interceded for the people"), inserting an explicit act of intercession not represented in the Hebrew verbs ya'amod or te'atsar. The LXX instead adds "ἐν τῷ λαῷ" ("among the people") to qualify where the plague was, a phrase also not present in the Hebrew.