Numbers 21:23

Summary

The verse narrates Sihon's refusal to let Israel cross his territory, followed by his military mobilization: he gathered his people, marched into the wilderness to confront Israel, reached Jahaz, and fought against them there.

Key words

• natan ("he permitted", H5414K) — qal perfect, a completed action negated by lo' ("not", H3808); Sihon's refusal is presented as a settled fact, not an ongoing process.
• 'avor ("to pass", H5674A) — qal infinitive construct, functioning as the object of what Sihon did not permit: "he did not give Israel [permission] to pass."
• ya'esof ("he gathered", H0622) — qal narrative form (vav-consecutive), the first of a chain of sequential actions that follow the initial refusal.
• liqrat ("to meet", H7122H) — qal infinitive with the preposition li ("to", H9005), expressing purpose: Sihon went out "in order to meet/confront" Israel.
• yillachem ("he engaged in battle", H3898A) — niphal narrative form; the niphal stem here conveys a reciprocal/engaged sense ("to fight," i.e., mutual combat) rather than a simple active verb.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence structure opens with a negated perfect verb, lo' natan ("he did not permit"), establishing Sihon's initial stance before any narrative action begins. The object of the infinitive 'avor ("to pass") is Israel, marked by the direct object particle 'et (H0853), and the phrase bi-gvul-o ("in his territory") specifies where passage was denied, using the construct noun gevul ("territory", H1366H) with a third-person suffix "his."

After this initial statement, the text shifts into a chain of four narrative (vav-consecutive) verbs: ya'esof ("he gathered"), yetze' ("he went out", H3318G), yavo' ("he came", H0935G), and yillachem ("he engaged in battle"). This chain marks sequential, discrete actions in the story's timeline, each introduced by the narrative vav (H9001), which in Biblical Hebrew signals "and then" rather than simple coordination. Directional he suffixes appear twice — on midbarah ("wilderness," H4057B + H9011) and Yahtzah ("Jahaz," H3096 + H9011) — indicating motion toward these locations, a grammatical feature not always visible in translation but present in the Hebrew morphology itself. The final verb, yillachem, is in the niphal stem, which the grammar marks as passive/reflexive, here understood as mutual engagement in combat ("he fought" in the sense of "he became engaged in battle") rather than a simple active strike.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the place name as Εἴσσα ("Eissa") where the Hebrew has Yahtzah ("Jahaz", H3096), a divergence in the transliteration/rendering of the toponym. The Vulgate uses Jasa for the same place name, differing again from both the Hebrew form and the LXX's Eissa.