Numbers 20:14

Summary

Moses sends messengers from Kadesh to the king of Edom with a message identifying Israel as Edom's "brother" and referencing the hardship that has befallen them. The verse combines a narrative report of the sending with the direct-speech opening of the message itself.

Key words

• va-yishlach ("and he sent", H7971G) — narrative vav plus qal perfect verb; establishes the sequential action opening the episode.
• mal'akhim ("messengers", H4397G) — masculine plural noun; the same root can denote human envoys or divine messengers, here specifying human diplomatic agents.
• achi-kha ("your brother", H0251G + H9021) — construct noun with 2nd person masculine singular suffix; grammatically binds "brother" directly to "you" (the king of Edom), forming the phrase "brother of yours."
• yada'ta ("you know", H3045) — qal perfect, 2nd person masculine singular; marks a completed, established state of knowledge rather than a request to learn something new.
• metza'atenu ("it has found us / come upon us", H4672) — qal perfect 3rd person feminine singular with 1st person plural suffix; the subject is ha-tela'ah ("the hardship," feminine), which grammatically "finds" or "meets" the people.

What the text says

The verse opens with a standard narrative chain: va-yishlach ("and he sent") followed by the subject Mosheh ("Moses"), the object mal'akhim ("messengers"), the point of departure mi-Kadesh ("from Kadesh"), and the destination 'el melekh 'Edom ("to the king of Edom"). This sets up the reported action before the direct speech begins.

The message itself starts with koh amar ("thus he says"), a formulaic introduction to quoted speech, followed by achi-kha Yisra'el ("your brother Israel"). Here achi is in construct form, syntactically tying "brother" to the 2nd-person suffix -kha ("your"), so the phrase reads literally "brother-of-you, Israel" — Israel identifies itself as kin to Edom's king before making any request.

The following clause, attah yada'ta ("you, you know"), uses an independent pronoun attah alongside the finite verb yada'ta, adding emphasis on the addressee's prior knowledge. The object is introduced by the untranslated marker 'et and the construct chain kol ha-tela'ah ("all the hardship"). The relative clause 'asher metza'atenu ("which has found us") uses a feminine verb form agreeing with the feminine noun tela'ah, and closes with the 1st person plural suffix -nu ("us"), so the hardship is the grammatical subject that "finds" or "meets" the people, rather than the people undergoing it as a direct object.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders tela'ah ("hardship", H8513) as μόχθον ("toil, distress"), a related but not identical semantic range to the Hebrew noun. The Vulgate's laborem ("labor, toil") similarly shifts the nuance toward exertion rather than the broader sense of "hardship" or "adversity" carried by the Hebrew root. The Hebrew construction "hardship...found us" (with hardship as grammatical subject) appears in the LXX as τὸν εὑρόντα ἡμᾶς ("the one having found us"), preserving the same verb structure, while the Vulgate's qui apprehendit nos ("which seized us") uses a different verb (apprehendere, "to seize") than a direct equivalent of "to find."