Numbers 31:18

Summary

Numbers 31:18 instructs that among the captured women, all the young females who have not had sexual relations with a man are to be kept alive. The verse uses a construct phrase for "little ones" combined with a qualifying clause about sexual experience to define which captives are spared.

Key words

• Taf ("little one[s]", H2945) — masculine singular noun in construct, here functioning collectively for young children; combined with ba-nashim ("among the women") it narrows the reference to young females specifically.
• na.shim ("women", H0802G) — plural noun following the preposition ba- ("among the"), establishing the group from which the taf are singled out.
• yade'u ("they have known", H3045) — qal perfect, third person plural, negated by lo' ("not", H3808); the perfect indicates completed action, so the clause describes women who have not (yet) experienced something.
• mishkav zachar ("lying of a male", H4904 + H2145) — construct chain functioning as an idiom for sexual intercourse; mishkav ("lying of...") requires a following noun to complete its meaning, here zachar ("a male").
• ha.cha.Yu ("preserve alive", H2421) — hiphil (causative) imperative, plural, addressed to the group receiving the command; the hiphil stem conveys causing someone to live, i.e., actively sparing them.

What the text says

The sentence opens with ve-khol ha-taf ("and all the little-ones/children"), a construct phrase that on its own could refer to children generally. The following prepositional phrase ba-nashim ("among the women") restricts this group to female children specifically, since they are counted as part of the female captives. The relative clause asher lo' yade'u mishkav zachar ("who have not known the lying of a male") further defines this group by sexual inexperience, using the qal perfect yade'u negated by lo' to state a completed absence of such experience up to the time of speaking.

The main clause command, ha.cha.Yu lakhem ("preserve alive for yourselves"), uses the hiphil imperative of the root ch-y-h ("to live"), which grammatically means "cause to live" rather than simply "let live" — the causative form frames the action as an active preservation rather than a passive absence of killing. The prepositional phrase lakhem ("for yourselves") indicates the beneficiary of this action is the group being addressed.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew taf ("little ones") is rendered by the LXX as apartian ("company/group"), a broader term not specifically tied to children, while the Vulgate translates the combined phrase taf ba-nashim directly as puellas ("girls"), making explicit what the Hebrew construct phrase implies contextually. The Vulgate also adds virgines ("virgins") as an interpretive gloss for the clause about not having known the lying of a male, a term not present as a separate lexical item in the Hebrew, which instead expresses this through the verbal clause lo' yade'u mishkav zachar.