Numbers 21:3

Summary

The verse reports that Yehovah heard Israel's voice (a plea, in context), handed over the Canaanite population, and that they were destroyed along with their cities. The place is then named Hormah, a name built on the same root as the verb for total destruction used earlier in the verse.

Key words

• va-yishma' ("he listened", H8085) — qal narrative form; opens the verse with YHWH as subject responding to what precedes.
• be-qol Yisra'el ("to the voice of Israel", H6963A + H3478) — construct chain, "voice of Israel," the object of the listening.
• va-yitten ("he delivered up", H5414) — qal narrative, continues YHWH as subject, handing over ha-kena'ani ("the Canaanite", H3669A), grammatically singular though referring to a people.
• va-yacharem ("it/he totally destroyed", H2763) — hiphil (causative) narrative form; the subject is not named by a separate noun, only carried in the verb's third-person masculine singular inflection.
• Chormah ("Hormah", H2767) — proper name sharing the same consonantal root (ח-ר-ם) as yacharem, so the place-name embeds the verb's meaning.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is a tight chain of four narrative (vav-consecutive) verbs — yishma', yitten, yacharem, yiqra' — each pushing the story forward in sequence: YHWH heard, YHWH delivered, [subject] destroyed, [subject] called. The grammatical subject of yacharem ("he/it totally destroyed") is not restated as a noun; it is carried only by the verb's masculine singular form, leaving open whether the acting subject is understood as Israel (continuing collectively from qol Yisra'el) or as a continuation of YHWH as agent through Israel. The direct objects 'et-hem ("them", H0853 + H9038) and 'et-'arei-hem ("their cities", H0853 + H5892B + H9028) are both plural, referring back to the Canaanite population and its cities even though ha-kena'ani itself was grammatically singular (a collective gentilic).

The closing clause plays on the root ח-ר-ם: the same consonants that form the verb yacharem ("totally destroy," H2763) reappear in the place-name Chormah (H2767), so the naming etymologically encodes the preceding action.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the destroyed party with a singular pronoun (τὸν χανανεὶ αὐτοῦ, "his/its Canaanite," and ἀνεθεμάτισεν αὐτόν, "he destroyed him"), preserving grammatical number as singular, where the Hebrew 'et-hem is explicitly plural ("them"). The LXX and Vulgate both make explicit in translation what the Hebrew name Chormah implies: LXX gives the place the Greek name Ἀνάθεμα ("Anathema"), and the Vulgate glosses "Horma, id est, anathema" ("Horma, that is, anathema"), spelling out the root-play that in Hebrew is left implicit in the sound of the name itself.