Numbers 21:2

Summary

The verse narrates that Israel made a vow to Yehovah, conditioning victory over an enemy people on a total consecration/destruction of their cities. The oath is introduced by the narrative sequence "vowed... and said," followed by a conditional clause using an emphatic infinitive construction.

Key words

• yiddar ("it vowed", H5087) — qal narrative form (vav-consecutive), marking the next event in the story sequence: Israel makes a vow.
• neder ("a vow", H5088) — masculine singular noun, the direct object of the vowing verb, forming a cognate pair with yiddar (verb and its own object share the root נדר).
• naton titten ("certainly...you will give", H5414G) — infinitive absolute (naton) followed by the imperfect (titten) of the same root; this doubling intensifies the conditional force ("if you really/certainly give").
• yadi ("my hand", H3027H + H9020) — construct noun with 1st person singular suffix, literally "into the hand of me," expressing the means/agency by which the people would be delivered.
• hacharamti ("I will totally destroy", H2763A) — hiphil (causative) sequential perfect, continuing the narrative chain and denoting a complete, irrevocable act of destruction/consecration to destruction.

What the text says

The verse is built on two narrative verbs in sequence — yiddar ("it vowed") and yomar ("it said") — both introduced by the narrative vav, which is the standard device for advancing storyline in Biblical Hebrew prose. The content of the vow is framed as direct speech beginning with the conditional particle 'im ("if"), followed by the infinitive absolute plus imperfect construction naton titten ("certainly you will give"). This grammatical doubling — infinitive absolute reinforcing the finite verb of the same root — is a common Hebrew intensifying device, here underscoring the certainty or emphasis of the condition rather than adding new semantic content that translations can easily reproduce with a single verb.

The object of the vow's condition is ha'am hazzeh ("this people"), marked by the object marker 'et and the demonstrative zeh ("this"), specifying a particular group. The phrase beyadi ("into my hand") uses the construct noun yad ("hand") with a first-person singular suffix, expressing the idiom of being delivered into someone's power. The apodosis of the vow, introduced by the sequential vav on hacharamti ("I will destroy"), uses the hiphil stem of the root related to herem (ban/destruction), a causative form indicating that Israel would cause the total destruction of "their cities" ('arei-hem, construct plural noun with 3rd person plural suffix).

Differences between versions

The Hebrew beyadi ("in my hand," singular) is rendered in some modern translations (BSB, SBLIBRE) as "our hands," shifting the grammatical number from singular to plural to reflect the collective subject "Israel." Similarly, the singular hacharamti ("I will destroy") is translated as "we will destroy" in BSB and SBLIBRE, again adjusting person/number for the collective referent. The Vulgate preserves the singular voice ("delebo," "I will destroy"), closer to the Hebrew grammatical form. The LXXSWETE text as provided reads "Τυρίῳ" ("to Tyrian[?]") where the Hebrew has laYHWH ("to Yehovah") — a divergence in this specific data source at that word.