Numbers 31:15

Summary

Moses addresses those returning from the campaign against Midian and asks, using a yes/no interrogative in Hebrew, whether they have kept every female alive. The verb form used for "kept alive" carries an intensive causative sense, implying active sparing rather than mere passive survival.

Key words

• va ("and", H9001) — narrative vav that links this speech directly to the preceding action, marking continuation of the story sequence.
• yomer ("he said", H0559) — qal verb in narrative form, the standard form for introducing direct speech in biblical narrative.
• ha ("¿", H9008) — interrogative particle prefixed to the verb; it turns the sentence into a yes/no question rather than an open "why" question.
• chiyitem ("have you let live", H2421) — piel (intensive) perfect, second person plural; the piel stem here conveys a causative nuance, "to cause to live" or "to actively spare," stronger than a simple statement of survival.
• neqevah ("female", H5347) — feminine singular noun, paired with kol ("every", H3605) to form the phrase "every female," the object of Moses' question.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is a short, direct question built on a single interrogative particle, ha (H9008), attached to the verb chiyitem (H2421). This particle does not ask "why" but rather "did you / have you" — it seeks a yes-or-no confirmation. The verb itself is in the piel binyan, which in Hebrew often intensifies or gives causative force to an action: not simply "they lived" but "you caused [them] to live" or "you kept [them] alive," implying a deliberate choice on the part of those addressed rather than an accidental outcome.

The object of the question, kol-neqevah ("every female", H3605 + H5347), is grammatically singular in form but functions distributively, covering the whole group of female captives. The structure places the verb and its interrogative marker before the object, typical of Hebrew verb-first questions, giving prominence to the action ("have you spared") before specifying who was spared.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew interrogative ha (H9008) marks a yes/no question ("Have you kept alive...?"), which the RV1909 and BSB preserve. The LXX, however, renders it with ἵνα τί ("for what reason" / "why"), and the Vulgate follows with Cur ("why"), both converting the yes/no question into an open "why" question. The SBLIBRE Spanish translation follows this LXX/Vulgate pattern with "¿Por qué...?" rather than the Hebrew's direct yes/no form.