Numbers 17:5

Summary

The verse describes a divine promise linked to the staff test: the staff belonging to the man YHWH selects will sprout, and this sign will end the Israelites' complaints against Moses and Aaron. The sentence moves from a conditional-like setup ("the man whom I choose") to a stated consequence (the sprouting and the cessation of grumbling).

Key words

• 'ev.char ("I will choose", H0977) — qal imperfect, 1st person; expresses a future/ongoing selection, the divine act that triggers the sign.
• yif.Rach ("it will bud", H6524A) — qal imperfect, 3rd person masculine; the staff's own future action, grammatically parallel to 'ev.char, tying the sign to the choice.
• ha.shi.ko.Ti ("I will put an end to", H7918) — hiphil (causative) sequential perfect, 1st person; marks a decisive divine intervention that follows logically from the sprouting.
• te.lu.nOt ("grumblings of", H8519) — feminine plural construct; grammatically bound to "sons of Israel," making the grumbling a possession/attribute of the people.
• ma.li.Nim ("are grumbling", H3885B) — hiphil participle, masculine plural; describes the ongoing, characteristic action of the people rather than a single past event.

What the text says

The verse opens with the narrative ve ("and") plus ha.Yah ("it will be", H1961), a sequential perfect that introduces the outcome of the preceding instructions about the staffs. The relative clause "the man whom I choose" (ha.'Ish 'a.Sher 'ev.char bo) uses the qal imperfect 'ev.char to mark YHWH's selection as the pivot of the sentence; the staff's sprouting (yif.Rach) is grammatically its consequence, both verbs being imperfect and future-oriented, creating a cause-and-effect rhythm.

The second half shifts to a hiphil sequential perfect, ha.shi.ko.Ti, "I will put an end to" — a causative form indicating that YHWH himself will act to stop something, here the te.lu.nOt ("grumblings") of the bene Yisra'el. The construct chain te.lu.nOt bene Yisra'el binds the noun "grumblings" directly to "sons of Israel," so the complaints are presented as belonging specifically to that group. The final clause uses the hiphil participle ma.li.Nim ("are grumbling"), a form that expresses a durative, characteristic action — the people are depicted as habitually grumbling 'a.leikhem ("against you", plural), directed at Moses and Aaron together.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew ha.shi.ko.Ti ("I will put an end to / cause to cease") is rendered in the LXX as περιελῶ ("I will remove/take away") and in the Vulgate as cohibebo ("I will restrain/hold back"). Both versions preserve the causative sense of stopping the complaints but use verbs with slightly different semantic ranges (removal vs. restraint) compared to the Hebrew's "causing to cease."