Numbers 27:14

Summary

The verse recalls the episode at Meribah in the wilderness of Zin, where the addressed party (Moses and Aaron, per context) rebelled against the divine "mouth" during a dispute with the congregation, in connection with an act meant to sanctify God before the people at the waters. The final clause identifies these waters as "the waters of Meribath-Kadesh" in the wilderness of Zin.

Key words

• meritem ("you rebelled against", H4784) — qal perfect, 2nd person masculine plural: a completed act of rebellion, addressed to more than one person.
• pi ("my mouth", H6310I + H9020) — construct noun with 1st person suffix; "mouth" stands for a spoken command, the direct object of the rebellion.
• merivat ("strife of", H4808) — feminine singular construct; links to ha'edah ("the congregation", H5712) to form "the strife of the congregation."
• hakdishe ("to treat as holy", H6942G) — hiphil infinitive construct, causative: not "to be holy" but "to cause [something/someone] to be treated as holy," here with the 1st person suffix -ni ("me", H9030) attached.
• mei ("waters of", H4325G) — masculine plural construct, repeated in the closing formula that names the site "waters of Meribath-Kadesh."

What the text says

The sentence opens with the comparative particle ka'asher ("as/since", H0834D) governing the perfect verb meritem, establishing a completed past rebellion as the basis for whatever follows in the wider passage. The object of that rebellion is pi ("my mouth"), a construct form with a 1st person suffix, meaning the rebellion was directed at a spoken command rather than at a person directly. Two locational/circumstantial phrases follow: bemidbar-Tzin ("in the wilderness of Zin") and bimrivat ha'edah ("in the strife of the congregation"), both introduced by the preposition be- ("in"), situating the rebellion within a specific place and a specific conflict.

The infinitive lehaqdisheni is a hiphil form of the root qadash ("to be holy", H6942G), here causative: "to make me holy" or "to treat me as holy," with the 1st person object built into the suffix -ni. Grammatically, this infinitive is not marked as negated in the Hebrew text itself — it describes the unmet purpose or occasion tied to the rebellion, rather than stating outright "you did not sanctify me." The phrase lə'einehem ("to their eyes", H5869A + H9028) uses the dual construct of "eyes" to mean "in their sight," specifying that the episode occurred publicly, before the congregation.

The final segment repeats mei ("waters of") in construct with Merivat Qadesh ("Meribah of Kadesh") and midbar-Tzin ("wilderness of Zin"), functioning as an identifying label for the location already named, using the independent pronoun hem ("they", H1992) to assert equivalence: "they [are] the waters of Meribath-Kadesh."

Differences between versions

The Hebrew infinitive lehaqdisheni ("to sanctify me") carries no explicit negation. The LXX renders this with an added negative clause, "οὐχ ἡγιάσατέ με" ("you did not sanctify me"), making explicit what the Hebrew infinitive leaves implicit through context. The Vulgate similarly supplies "nec sanctificare me voluistis" ("nor did you wish to sanctify me"), also inserting a negation and a verb of volition not present as separate lexical items in the Hebrew construct infinitive.