Numbers 31:11

Summary

The verse reports that the Israelites took all the plunder and all the booty, encompassing both humans and livestock. It is a summary statement following the military campaign against Midian described earlier in the chapter.

Key words

• va-yyikchu ("and they took", H3947G) — qal verb in narrative (wayyiqtol) form; the narrative vav va (H9001) chains this action to the preceding events, marking it as the next step in the sequence.
• shalal ("plunder", H7998) — masculine singular noun, definite via the article ha (H9009) and marked by the construct kol ("all", H3605), forming "all the plunder."
• malqoach ("booty", H4455A) — masculine singular noun, likewise made definite and totalized by kol ha- ("all the"), paralleling shalal in the same clause structure.
• ba-adam ("among humankind", H0120G) — noun with prefixed preposition and article ba (H9003), specifying one category encompassed by the plunder.
• u-va-behemah ("and among the livestock", H0929) — feminine singular noun with conjunction u (H9002) and the same preposition-article combination, forming the second category paired with adam.

What the text says

The verse is built on a single main clause introduced by the narrative verb va-yyikchu ("and they took", H3947G), which continues the sequence of actions from the preceding verses. The direct object of this verb is doubled: et kol ha-shalal ("all the plunder") and ve-et kol ha-malqoach ("and all the booty"), each marked by the object marker 'et (H0853) and quantified by the construct noun kol ("all", H3605). This doubling creates a comprehensive expression — two partially overlapping terms for captured goods — reinforced by the repetition of "all" before each.

The phrase ba-adam u-va-behemah ("among humankind and among the livestock") functions as a further specification, using the preposition ba (H9003, "in/among the") attached to both adam ("humankind", H0120G) and behemah ("livestock", H0929). This prepositional pairing indicates that the plunder and booty just named included both human captives and animals, without listing separate objects for each — the categories qualify the scope of shalal and malqoach rather than introducing new grammatical objects.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders shalal and malqoach as προνομήν ("plunder") and σκῦλα αὐτῶν ("their spoils"), adding a possessive pronoun ("their") not present in the Hebrew construct phrase. The Vulgate uses prædam ("plunder") and universa quæ ceperant ("all that they had captured"), a more paraphrastic rendering of malqoach than a direct lexical equivalent. The Hebrew preposition ba ("among the") in both instances is rendered by the LXX with ἀπὸ...ἕως ("from...to"), shifting the sense slightly from inclusion "among" categories to a range "from...to."