Numbers 21:10

Summary

Numbers 21:10 reports a brief travel notice: the people of Israel set out from their previous location and made camp at a place called Oboth. The verse is a simple two-verb narrative sequence marking a stage in the wilderness itinerary.

Key words

• va-yis'u ("and they set out", H5265) — qal narrative verb (vav-consecutive), marking the first sequential action of the itinerary.
• bene ("[the] people of", H1121G) — masculine plural noun in construct state, linking to Yisra'el to form "sons/people of Israel."
• Yisra'el ("Israel", H3478) — proper name identifying the subject of both verbs.
• va-yachanu ("and they encamped", H2583) — qal narrative verb (vav-consecutive), marking the second sequential action, the result of the journey.
• be-Ovot ("in Oboth", H0088 with H9003) — prepositional phrase naming the destination/encampment site.

What the text says

The verse is built on a chain of two narrative (vav-consecutive) verbs: va-yis'u ("and they set out") followed by va-yachanu ("and they encamped"). This grammatical pattern is typical of Hebrew narrative prose, where each vav-consecutive form pushes the story forward in sequence — first departure, then arrival and settling. Both verbs are in the qal (simple active) stem and third person masculine plural, agreeing with the subject bene Yisra'el ("the people of Israel"), a construct phrase where bene ("sons/people of") is grammatically bound to the proper name Yisra'el.

The second verb, va-yachanu, is followed by the preposition be ("in") attached to the place name Ovot, specifying the location where the encampment occurred. The structure is minimal and formulaic, consisting only of subject, two sequential verbs, and a locative complement — a pattern that recurs throughout the wilderness itinerary notices in Numbers. No additional descriptive or temporal information is present in the Hebrew beyond this bare notice of movement and settlement.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew text, the LXX (καὶ ἀπῆραν οἱ υἱοὶ Ἰσραήλ, καὶ παρενέβαλον ἐν Ὠβώθ), and the Vulgate (Profectique filii Israël castrametati sunt in Oboth) all preserve the same two-part sequence — departure and encampment — with no significant divergence in content. The Vulgate renders the two Hebrew narrative verbs with a participial construction (profectique... castrametati sunt, "having set out... they encamped"), differing stylistically from the Hebrew's paired sequential verb forms, though the reported action remains the same.