Numbers 3:13

Summary

The verse states that every firstborn belongs to Yehovah, grounding this claim in the event of the day he struck down the firstborn in Egypt, on which he set apart for himself all the firstborn in Israel, of both humankind and livestock. It closes with a self-identification formula, "I am Yehovah."

Key words

• li (H9030 with H9005) — "to me": the preposition le + first-person suffix, repeated three times (lines 2, 16, 26), marking possession/belonging ("mine") rather than a verb "to be," which structures the whole verse around Yehovah as owner.
• bekhor ("firstborn", H1060) — masculine singular noun in construct chains (kol-bekhor, "every firstborn"), appearing four times, the recurring subject of the declaration.
• hakoti ("[in my] striking", H5221) — Hiphil infinitive with first-person suffix, causative form ("to cause to strike/smite"), used adverbially with be-yom ("on the day of") to date the consecration event.
• hiqdashti ("I set apart", H6942) — Hiphil perfect, first-person singular, denoting a completed act of setting apart/making holy; causative stem indicates Yehovah actively causing the firstborn to become consecrated.
• yihyu ("they will belong", H1961) — Qal imperfect, third-person masculine plural of the verb "to be," expressing an ongoing or future state ("they will be/belong"), reinforcing the possessive li.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence opens with ki ("for"), introducing a causal clause that justifies the preceding instruction (not included in this excerpt) by stating li kol-bekhor, "to me [belongs] every firstborn" — a nominal (verbless) clause where possession is expressed purely through the preposition le + pronoun, without a copula verb. This construction is repeated at the end of the verse (li yihyu, "to me they will be/belong"), forming a kind of envelope structure around the verse: the claim of ownership opens and closes the statement, with the historical justification placed in between.

The middle section is temporally anchored by be-yom hakoti ("on the day of my striking"), using the Hiphil infinitive construct of the verb "to strike," which frames the Egyptian plague event as the temporal marker for the consecration act (hiqdashti, Hiphil perfect). The construct chain kol-bekhor be-Yisra'el ("every firstborn in Israel") is further specified by the merism me-adam ad-behemah ("from man unto beast"), a phrase using two extremes (adam, "humankind," and behemah, "livestock") to indicate totality — every firstborn of every kind, without exception. The verse ends with the self-identification formula ani Yehovah ("I [am] Yehovah"), a personal pronoun followed directly by the divine name, without a linking verb, asserting identity through mere juxtaposition.

Differences between versions

No substantive divergences appear between the Hebrew, the LXX, and the Vulgate; all three preserve the same structure of claim (firstborn belong to the deity), historical justification (the striking in Egypt), and closing self-identification formula.