Numbers 17:7

Summary

The verse narrates that Moses deposited the rods before Yehovah, inside the Tent of the Testimony. It is a short narrative statement marking the placement of the rods in a specific sacred location.

Key words

• va-yannach ("and he deposited", H5117) — hiphil (causative) verb in the narrative form (vav + prefix conjugation), indicating a completed action that follows sequentially in the story: Moses causes the rods to rest/be placed.
• ha-mattot ("the rods", H4294G) — feminine plural noun with definite article, marking these as the specific rods already mentioned in the preceding narrative, not rods in general.
• li-fnei ("before", H6440G) — construct plural noun panim ("face/presence") governed by the preposition le, literally "to the face of," an idiom for being in someone's presence.
• be-'ohel ("in the tent of", H0168G) — masculine singular noun in construct state, meaning it must be followed by another noun to complete its meaning ("tent of X").
• ha-'edut ("the testimony", H5715) — feminine singular noun with definite article, completing the construct chain "tent of the testimony," naming the specific tent by its function or contents.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence follows the standard narrative pattern: a vav-prefixed verb (va-yannach) opens the clause, placing this action in sequence with what precedes it in the chapter. The subject Mosheh ("Moses", H4872) follows immediately, then the direct object marked by 'et (H0853, untranslated) attached to ha-mattot ("the rods"). The definite article on mattot signals these are the specific rods already introduced earlier in the passage, not a general reference.

The verb yannach is a hiphil form of a root meaning "to rest" — the causative stem indicates that Moses causes the rods to come to rest in a location, rather than simply "leaving" them, which is a common gloss but slightly flattens the causative nuance of the Hebrew stem.

The location is given in two layered prepositional phrases. First, li-fnei Yehovah ("before Yehovah") uses the construct noun panim ("face") to express presence — literally "to the face of Yehovah." Second, be-'ohel ha-'edut ("in the tent of the testimony") is a construct chain: 'ohel ("tent") is grammatically bound to ha-'edut ("the testimony"), so the two nouns together name a single location, the tent associated with the testimony. The article appears only on the second noun of the construct pair, following normal Hebrew construct-chain rules, not on 'ohel itself.

Differences between versions

The Vulgate reorders the clause, opening with Quas cum posuisset Moyses ("when Moses had placed these"), turning the main narrative verb into a subordinate temporal clause dependent on the following verse, a syntactic restructuring not present in the Hebrew, which presents va-yannach as an independent sequential narrative verb. The LXX uses ἀπέθηκεν ("he put away/deposited"), a straightforward rendering of the placement, and ἔναντι Κυρίου ("before the Lord") corresponding closely to li-fnei Yehovah.