Numbers 31:17

Summary

Moses commands the Israelites to kill every male among the captured children (taf) and every woman who has had sexual relations with a man, while implicitly sparing women who have not. The instruction is framed by a repeated imperative form of "kill," which brackets the specific targets named in between.

Key words

• hirgu ("kill", H2026) — qal imperative masculine plural, opening the command before its object is specified.
• taf ("little one[s]", H2945) — masculine singular noun (collective sense), here restricted by khol zakhar ("every male") to specify which children are targeted.
• yoda'at ("knowing", H3045) — qal active participle feminine singular; a participle used substantively to describe an ongoing state or completed experience ("the one who has known").
• mishkav ("lying of", H4904) — masculine singular noun in construct state, forming a bound phrase with zakhar ("a male") to produce the idiom "the lying of a male," i.e., sexual intercourse.
• harogu ("kill", H2026) — same qal imperative form as hirgu, repeated at the end of the verse to close the instruction.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence opens and closes with the same imperative verb, hirgu...harogu ("kill"), both from H2026. This repetition creates a frame around the two categories of people targeted: "every male among the little ones" (khol zakhar ba-taf) and "every woman who has known a man" (khol ishah yoda'at ish). The verb at the end, positioned after its object clause, gives the sentence a structure where the command surrounds its content rather than simply preceding it — a feature not obviously preserved when translations place a single "kill" only at the start.

The phrase yoda'at ish uses the verb "to know" (H3045) as a euphemism for sexual experience, paired with the construct phrase lemishkav zakhar ("to the lying of a male"), which reinforces the same idea through a different idiom built on the noun mishkav ("lying", H4904). The doubling of vocabulary for the same concept — the participle "knowing" and the construct "lying of" — marks this clause as deliberately specifying the criterion by which the women's fate is decided, distinct from the more general term taf used for children.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders taf (H2945, "little ones") with the phrase ἐν πάσῃ τῇ ἀπαρτίᾳ ("in all the company/group"), a broader term than the Hebrew's specific reference to children. The Vulgate's in parvulis ("in the little ones") corresponds more closely to the Hebrew taf. The Spanish and English versions (RV1909, BSB, SBLIBRE) follow the Hebrew/Vulgate sense, translating taf as "niños" or "boys," rather than the LXX's more general "company."