Numbers 17:13

Summary

The verse records the people's reaction after the incident involving Aaron's role at the tabernacle: anyone who comes near the mishkan ("tabernacle") of Yehovah dies, and the community asks whether they are all going to perish completely. The Hebrew emphasizes both the danger of approaching the sacred space and the people's fear of total destruction.

Key words

• qarev ("[person] approaching", H7131) — a masculine singular adjective functioning as a substantive ("the one who approaches"); it appears twice in immediate repetition (ha-qarev ha-qarev), intensifying the sense of "anyone at all who approaches."
• mishkan ("[the] tabernacle of", H4908) — a construct-state noun, meaning it must be followed by another noun (here Yehovah) to complete its sense: "tabernacle of Yehovah."
• yamut ("he will die", H4191) — qal imperfect, marking an action seen as ongoing or generally recurring: not a single past death but a rule that applies whenever the condition (approaching) is met.
• ha'im ("¿...or", H9008 + H0518H) — the interrogative particle ha combined with the conditional particle 'im forms a rhetorical yes/no question, common in Biblical Hebrew for expressing alarm or doubt.
• tamnu ("will we complete", H8552) — qal perfect, "we have finished/completed"; despite being grammatically past-complete, in this rhetorical question it points toward an anticipated total outcome ("are we to be entirely finished").

What the text says

The sentence divides into two independent clauses. The first, kol ha-qarev ha-qarev el mishkan Yehovah yamut, states a general rule: "everyone who approaches — who approaches — the tabernacle of Yehovah will die." The doubling of qarev ("[person] approaching") is a grammatical feature of the Hebrew text itself, not a translation choice; it places heavy emphasis on the act of approaching as the triggering condition for death.

The second clause, ha'im tamnu ligvoa, is a question built from the interrogative ha attached to the conditional 'im, followed by the perfect verb tamnu ("we have completed") and the infinitive ligvoa ("to die," from H1478). Literally the construction asks something like "Is it that we have completed [ourselves] in dying?" — a compact idiom expressing whether the group as a whole is destined for total destruction. The infinitive with lamed prefix (li-gvoa) expresses purpose or result attached to the verb tamnu, giving the sense "we are finished, in dying" rather than a straightforward future tense.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew doubles the subject (ha-qarev ha-qarev, "the one approaching, the one approaching"), while the LXX instead doubles the verb: ἀποθνήσκει· θνήσκει· ("dies; dies"), shifting the repetition from the subject to the predicate. The LXX also renders qarev ("approaching") with ἁπτόμενος ("touching"), a narrower physical action than mere approach. The Vulgate does not reproduce the doubling at all, using a single accedit ("approaches"). For the closing question, the Vulgate's "Num usque ad internecionem cuncti delendi sumus?" ("are we all to be destroyed to utter destruction?") and the LXX's "ἕως εἰς τέλος ἀποθάνωμεν" ("shall we die until the end?") both expand the compact Hebrew ha'im tamnu ligvoa into fuller phrases emphasizing totality, where the Hebrew idiom is more terse.