Numbers 20:19

Summary

The Israelites tell Edom's king that they will stay on the highway, will pay for any water they or their livestock drink, and ask only to pass through on foot. The verse combines a proposed route, a conditional payment offer, and a closing request framed as harmless.

Key words

• bammesillah ("on the highway", H4546) — feminine singular noun with prefixed preposition and article, specifying the fixed, known road rather than open terrain.
• na'aleh ("we will go up", H5927) — qal imperfect, first person plural; the imperfect aspect marks ongoing or future action, i.e. the intended march itself, not a completed act.
• nishteh ("we will drink", H8354) — qal imperfect, first person plural, placed after the conditional particle 'im ("if", H0518A), forming a hypothetical: "if we drink..."
• natati ("I will give", H5414P) — qal sequential perfect, first person singular; this form continues the narrative sequence begun by the imperfects, functioning as a promised consequence ("...then I will give").
• e'evorah ("let me pass through", H5674A) — tagged grammatically as an infinitive form, but rendered with first-person volitive force ("let me pass"), showing that the Hebrew verbal form here carries a request/wish nuance beyond a plain infinitive translation.

What the text says

The sentence is built as a chain: a statement of route (bammesillah na'aleh, "on the highway we will go up"), followed by a conditional clause introduced by ve'im ("and if", H9002+H0518A) covering water use for both people (ani, "I", H0589) and livestock (miqnai, "my livestock", H4735, construct with 1st person suffix), and closed by the sequential ve-natati mikhram ("and I will give their price", H5414P + H4377), where mikhram is a construct noun with a 3rd person plural suffix referring to the waters just mentioned. The clause rak 'ein-davar ("only there is not a thing", H7535 + H0369 + H1697I) minimizes the request, and the final verb e'evorah closes the speech with a first-person appeal to pass, syntactically anchored to be-raglai ("on my feet", H7272 dual construct with suffix), emphasizing travel on foot rather than by other means.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders bammesillah na'aleh as "παρὰ τὸ ὄρος παρελευσόμεθα" ("we will pass beside the mountain"), differing from the Hebrew's "highway," and repeats this phrase at the end where the Hebrew instead has be-raglai 'e'evorah ("on my feet let me pass"). The Hebrew natati mikhram ("I will give their price," referring to the waters) becomes in the LXX "δώσω τιμήν σοι" ("I will give payment to you"), shifting the object of payment from the water itself to the addressee. The Vulgate's "dabimus quod justum est" ("we will give what is just") generalizes the payment further, without the construct-noun link to the water's "price" (mikhram) found in the Hebrew.