Numbers 20:3

Summary

The people enter into a dispute with Moses, expressing a wish that they had died along with their brothers in a previous incident, using an emphatic optative construction "if only" before the presence of Yehovah.

Key words

• va.Yarev ("it quarreled", H7378) — qal narrative (wayyiqtol) form; the vav-consecutive marks this as the next event in the story sequence, introducing the conflict.
• lu ("if", H3863) — a particle expressing wish or unfulfilled condition; here it functions as an optative marker ("would that...").
• gava'nu ("we had died", H1478) — qal perfect, completed aspect; expresses the wished-for state as if already accomplished, reinforcing the optative sense begun by lu.
• bigva' ("died", H1478) — infinitive construct of the same root as gava'nu, prefixed with the preposition bi ("when/in"); creates a temporal clause: "when the dying of our brothers [happened]."
• achei-nu ("our brothers", H0251I) — construct plural noun with 1st person plural suffix; grammatically bound to the infinitive that follows it in the underlying Hebrew syntax (the infinitive construct governs the following noun).

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence opens with two wayyiqtol verbs — va.Yarev ("and it quarreled") and va.yomeru ("and they said") — which anchor the report in sequential narrative time. The direct speech that follows is built on the particle lu, which introduces an unrealizable wish, reinforced by the perfect verb gava'nu ("we had died"), a completed-aspect form used here not to state a past fact but to frame the wished-for death as if it had already happened.

The phrase bigva' achei-nu uses the preposition bi attached to an infinitive construct of the same root (ga.va', "to die") that produced gava'nu. This root repetition (perfect + infinitive construct) creates a paronomastic structure common in Biblical Hebrew, tying the speakers' wished death to the specific temporal circumstance of "when our brothers died." The construct noun achei-nu ("brothers-our") is governed by this infinitive, meaning the infinitive construct + noun functions as a time clause: "when our brothers died," rather than stating a location or manner.

The clause closes with lifnei Yehovah ("before the face of Yehovah"), using the construct noun fnei ("face of") governing the divine name, a common construct phrase marking presence or proximity to Yehovah.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew bigva' achei-nu ("when our brothers died") is rendered in the LXX as ἐν τῇ ἀπωλίᾳ τῶν ἀδελφῶν ἡμῶν ("in the destruction of our brothers"), shifting from a temporal infinitive construction to a noun phrase indicating manner or cause. The Vulgate renders it as inter fratres nostros ("among/between our brothers"), which shifts the sense further toward a locative or associative meaning, omitting reference to the brothers' death as an event and instead describing companionship in death.