Numbers 22:3
וַיָּגָר מוֹאָב מִפְּנֵי הָעָם מְאֹד כִּי רַב־הוּא וַיָּקָץ מוֹאָב מִפְּנֵי בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵֽל׃
✦ Hebrew interlinear
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✦ The same verse in five languages
וַיָּ֨גָר מוֹאָ֜ב מִפְּנֵ֥י הָעָ֛ם מְאֹ֖ד כִּ֣י רַב־ה֑וּא וַיָּ֣קָץ מוֹאָ֔ב מִפְּנֵ֖י בְּנֵ֥י יִשְׂרָאֵֽל׃
Ἀμορραίῳ, καὶ ἐφοβήθη Μωὰβ τὸν λαὸν σφόδρα, ὅτι πολλοὶ ἦσαν. καὶ προσώχθισεν Μωὰβ ἀπὸ προσώπου υἱῶν Ἰσραήλ.
Greek text from Swete's edition, CC BY-SA 4.0
Latin (Vulgate)
et quod pertimuissent eum Moabitæ, et impetum ejus ferre non possent,
los de Moab se llenaron de miedo, porque el pueblo de Israel era muy grande. Estaban aterrorizados por culpa de los israelitas.
Classic Spanish (Reina-Valera 1909)
Y Moab temió mucho á causa del pueblo que era mucho; y angustióse Moab á causa de los hijos de Israel.
and Moab was terrified of the people because they were numerous. Indeed, Moab dreaded the Israelites.
✦ What the text says
Summary
The verse describes Moab's reaction to the Israelite camp: the nation feels afraid because the people are numerous, and separately dreads the "sons of Israel." The Hebrew uses two different verbs of fear in parallel clauses, each introduced by the same prepositional phrase structure.
Key words
- yagor ("it was afraid", H1481C) — qal narrative verb, third person masculine singular; the first of two fear-verbs applied to Moab.
- pene ("because of", H6440I) — construct plural noun (literally "face of"), used twice to introduce the cause of fear; construct form links it to what follows.
- rav ("[was] numerous", H7227A) — masculine singular adjective describing the people (ha'am) as many.
- yaqotz ("it felt dread", H6973) — qal narrative verb, third person masculine singular; a second, distinct verb from yagor, describing an intensified or different quality of fear/loathing toward Israel.
- bene ("[the] people of", H1121G) — construct plural noun, forming the phrase "sons of Israel" with the following proper name.
What the text says
The Hebrew sentence is built as two parallel clauses, each with the same skeleton: subject Mo'av + verb of fear + mipne ("because of") + object. In the first clause, the object is ha'am ("the people"), qualified by me'od ("exceedingly") and by a causal clause ki rav hu ("for it/he was numerous"), using the adjective rav with the pronoun hu. In the second clause, the object shifts from the generic "the people" to the specific bene Yisra'el ("sons of Israel"), and the verb changes from yagor to yaqotz. This repetition with variation — same syntactic frame, different verb and different naming of the same group — produces a rhetorical intensification: first a general dread of a large population, then a more pointed reaction toward Israel identified by name and lineage (bene, "sons of").
The construct noun pene ("face of") in both clauses is not visually rendered in translation as "face" but functions idiomatically to mean "because of" or "on account of," a common construction in Biblical Hebrew narrative.
Differences between versions
The LXX renders the first clause with ephobethe... ton laon sphodra — "feared... the people greatly" — treating "the people" as a direct object rather than through a "because of" construction, and gives the reason as hoti polloi esan ("because they were many"), using a plural verb referring to the people rather than the singular pronoun hu ("it/he") found in the Hebrew. For the second clause, the LXX uses prosochthisen ("was aggrieved/loathed"), a different semantic nuance than "dread," rendering yaqotz.
The Vulgate condenses both Hebrew clauses into one: "the Moabites feared him greatly, and could not bear his onslaught" (impetum eius ferre non possent), a phrase about military threat not present in the Hebrew wording of this verse.
This explanation describes the text using linguistic data; it adds no doctrine or confessional interpretation.