Numbers 31:14

Summary

The verse reports that Moses became angry at the military officers — commanders of thousands and commanders of hundreds — who were returning from the battle. The Hebrew marks this as a narrative event continuing the account, with the officers identified through a chain of construct phrases.

Key words

• va-yyiqtzof ("and he was angry", H7107) — qal narrative verb (wayyiqtol form), marking the next event in the story sequence: "and then Moses became angry."
• pequdei ("officers of", H6485J) — passive qal participle in construct form, literally "those who were appointed/mustered," linking directly to ha-chayil ("the army").
• sarei ("commanders of", H8269) — masculine plural construct noun, appearing twice (with ha-alafim, "the thousands," and ha-me'ot, "the hundreds"), building a chain that specifies rank.
• ha-ba'im ("the ones coming", H0935G) — qal participle with definite article, describing the officers as those currently "returning," not a completed action but an ongoing/descriptive state.
• mi-tzeva ("from the war of", H6635I) — construct noun with preposition, forming the phrase "from the war of the battle," a construct chain intensifying the sense of military campaign.

What the text says

The sentence opens with the narrative verb va-yyiqtzof ("and he was angry," H7107), placing Moses' reaction as the next link in the story's sequence. The object of his anger is introduced by the preposition 'al ("towards," H5921A) followed by pequdei he-chayil ("the officers of the army"), where pequdei (H6485J) is a passive participle in construct — grammatically presenting the officers as "those who were appointed/mustered over" the army, rather than as an independent noun for "officer."

The text then specifies these officers through two parallel construct phrases: sarei ha-alafim ("commanders of the thousands," H8269 + H0505G) and sarei ha-me'ot ("commanders of the hundreds," H8269 + H3967), joined by the conjunction ve ("and," H9002). This structure lists two ranks within the military hierarchy rather than two separate groups of people, both falling under the initial designation pequdei he-chayil.

Finally, the participial phrase ha-ba'im mi-tzeva ha-milchamah ("the ones coming from the war of the battle") uses the article-marked participle ba'im (H0935G) to describe the officers' current situation — returning from campaign — rather than narrating a discrete past action.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew text presents a finite verb, va-yyiqtzof ("and he was angry," H7107), as the main narrative action. The Vulgate renders this with a participial construction, Iratusque ("and being angry"), attached to Moyses, which grammatically subordinates the anger to the following clause rather than presenting it as the primary narrated event. The LXX text as given here shows only "καὶ Μωυσῆς ἐπὶ..." ("and Moses upon/against..."), without an explicit verb corresponding to "was angry," differing from both the Hebrew's finite verb and the Vulgate's participial phrasing.