Numbers 27:23

Summary

The verse narrates the final act of Joshua's commissioning: Moses lays his hands on Joshua and gives him charge, and the narrator notes that this action matches what Yehovah had spoken through Moses. The verse closes the unit begun with Yehovah's instructions to Moses regarding his successor.

Key words

• yismokh ("he laid", H5564) — qal narrative verb, marking the first sequential action of the verse: the physical gesture of placing hands.
• yetzavvehu ("he commissioned", H6680) — piel narrative verb with 3ms suffix "him"; the piel stem gives an intensive/causative nuance, "to charge, appoint," stronger than a simple instruction.
• ka'asher ("as", H0834D) — relative particle introducing a comparative clause that ties Moses' action to a prior divine word.
• diber ("he had spoken", H1696G) — piel perfect, denoting completed speech prior to the narrated action; grammatically anchors the comparison in the past.
• yad-Mosheh ("hand of Moses", H3027J) — construct noun phrase, idiomatic for "through the agency/mediation of Moses."

What the text says

The verse is built on two consecutive narrative verbs, yismokh ("he laid") and yetzavvehu ("he commissioned"), both with vav-narrative prefixes that present them as sequential events: first the hand-laying, then the commissioning. The subject of both verbs, carried over from the preceding verses, is Moses; the object throughout is Joshua, marked by the direct object particle 'et and the pronominal suffixes on yadav ("his hands") and 'alav ("upon him").

The second half of the verse shifts from narrative to a subordinate comparative clause introduced by ka'asher ("as"), followed by the piel perfect diber ("he had spoken"). This perfect form indicates an action completed before the main narrative events — Yehovah's speech précédés Moses' action. The clause ends with the construct phrase be-yad Mosheh ("by the hand of Moses"), an idiom for mediated transmission. Notably, Moses appears twice in the sentence: as the one performing the commissioning and, grammatically, as the "hand" through which Yehovah's earlier word was transmitted — a repetition that underlines his mediating role between Yehovah's speech and Joshua's installation.

Differences between versions

The Vulgate renders the hand-laying as impositis capiti ejus manibus ("with hands placed upon his head"), adding "head" (capiti), a detail not present in the Hebrew, which states only yadav 'alav ("his hands upon him") without specifying the body part touched.

The Vulgate also translates yetzavvehu ("he commissioned him") as cuncta replicavit ("he repeated all"), shifting the sense from an act of charging/appointing to one of reciting or restating content. Additionally, the Vulgate's quae mandaverat Dominus ("which the Lord had commanded") omits the explicit instrumental phrase be-yad Mosheh ("by the hand of Moses"), collapsing the mediated-transmission idiom into a direct reference to the Lord's command.