Numbers 21:9

Summary

The verse describes Moses making a bronze snake and setting it on a standard, establishing a conditional pattern: whenever a snake had bitten a person, looking at the bronze snake resulted in that person living. The verse moves from a single completed act (making, placing) to a repeated conditional sequence (biting, looking, living).

Key words

• nechash ("snake of", H5175) — construct form, meaning it must be paired with the following noun; it does not stand alone as "snake" but as "snake of [bronze]".
• nechoshet ("bronze", H5178A) — feminine singular noun functioning as the construct's second element, specifying the material of the nechash.
• nes ("standard", H5251H) — masculine singular noun with definite article ha, identifying a specific pole or banner already established as the standard in context.
• hibbit ("he looked", H5027) — hiphil (causative) stem, sequential perfect; the hiphil here conveys directed, intentional looking rather than a passive glance.
• chai ("he lived", H2421) — qal sequential perfect, closing the conditional chain; grammatically it continues the "if... then" sequence begun by haYah ("it was", H1961).

What the text says

The verse divides into two grammatical units. The first (words 1–11) is straightforward narrative: two verbs in the qal narrative form — ya'as ("he made", H6213H) and yasem ("he put", H7760A) — report Moses' single, completed actions of making the bronze snake and placing it on the nes. The construct phrase nechash nechoshet ("snake of bronze") functions almost as a compound noun, "a bronze snake," with nechoshet specifying the material.

The second unit (words 12–27) shifts into a conditional structure introduced by haYah ("it was") plus 'im ("if", H0518A). This is not a single past event but a generalized, repeatable condition: if the snake (ha-nachash) bit 'ish ("anyone", H0376I — a generic singular standing for any person), then the person looked (hibbit, hiphil) toward the nechash ha-nechoshet ("the bronze snake," now with definite article on nechoshet, marking it as the specific object already introduced) and lived (chai). The verbs in this second half are all sequential perfects, a form that in Biblical Hebrew narrates a chain of consequence rather than isolated single events — reinforcing that this looking-and-living pattern occurred repeatedly, not once.

Differences between versions

The Vulgate renders the outcome as "sanabantur" ("they were healed"), using a plural passive verb, where the Hebrew chai ("he lived", H2421) is singular and means "lived" rather than "was healed." The Vulgate also treats the afflicted as plural ("percussi," "those struck"), while the Hebrew uses the singular 'ish ("anyone") as a generic reference to any individual person. The LXX uses ὅταν ("whenever") to render the Hebrew conditional 'im ("if"), and its provided text breaks off before completing the final clause corresponding to va-chai ("and he lived").