Numbers 21:7

Summary

The people come to Moses and admit they have sinned by speaking against Yehovah and against him. They ask him to intercede so that Yehovah removes the snake, and the verse closes with Moses praying on behalf of the people.

Key words

• chatanu ("we have sinned", H2398) — qal perfect, 1st person plural: a completed act, stated as plain confession without qualifying clause.
• dibbarnu ("we have spoken", H1696) — piel perfect, 1st plural: the piel (intensive) stem marks the speaking against Yehovah and Moses as forceful or repeated, not a single casual remark.
• hitpallel ("pray", H6419) — hithpael imperative, 2nd masculine singular: a reflexive-stem command addressed to Moses, asking him to perform the act of prayer for the people.
• yaser ("may he remove", H5493) — hiphil jussive, 3rd masculine singular: causative stem, expressing a wish that Yehovah cause the snake's removal, dependent on the prayer just requested.
• nachash ("snake", H5175) — masculine singular noun with the definite article ha (H9009): grammatically singular, referring to the snake(s) as a collective category rather than a specific individual snake.

What the text says

The verse opens with two narrative vav-forms — vayyavo ("and it came", H0935G) and vayyomeru ("and they said", H0559) — chaining the people's arrival and speech into a single continuous narrative sequence. Their confession chatanu is followed by a ki (H3588A) clause giving the reason: dibbarnu bayehovah vavakh, "we have spoken against Yehovah and against you." The preposition ba (H9003) is repeated with the divine name and then, through the conjunction va (H9002) plus preposition-plus-suffix bakh ("against you"), creates a grammatically parallel structure placing Yehovah and Moses as equal objects of the people's wrongful speech.

The people's request uses the imperative hitpallel, directly commanding Moses to pray, followed by the hiphil jussive yaser, expressing the desired outcome — Yehovah's removal of the nachash — as consequence of that prayer. The object marker 'et (H0853) before hanachash marks the noun as the direct object of the removal, though it carries no independent meaning of its own. The verse ends with a second occurrence of the same root palal ("to pray", H6419), now in hithpael narrative form, vayyitpallel, describing Moses actually carrying out the prayer for the people (be'ad ha'am), forming a frame with the imperative earlier in the verse — the same verb first commanded, then executed.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew nachash is grammatically singular (with collective sense), which the Vulgate renders as plural serpentes ("serpents"), while the LXX keeps it singular, τὸν ὄφιν ("the serpent"). The LXX also renders the final clause elliptically, καὶ Μωυσῆς πρὸς κύριον περὶ τοῦ λαοῦ ("and Moses to the Lord concerning the people"), without repeating a verb for "prayed," where the Hebrew explicitly restates the verb vayyitpallel ("and he prayed").