Numbers 31:20

Summary

The verse instructs that every garment, every article of hide, every product made of goat hair, and every article of wood must undergo purification. It closes a list of items requiring ritual treatment following contact associated with the preceding military campaign context in Numbers 31.

Key words

• khol ("every", H3605) — repeated four times, each in construct form ("X of..."), creating a fourfold structured list of item categories.
• Beged ("garment", H899B) — masculine singular noun, the first category of objects named.
• ma'aseh ("product of", H4639G) — construct form meaning "the making/product of," here paired with 'izzim to denote items manufactured from goat hair.
• 'izzim ("goat hair", H5795) — masculine plural noun, specifying the material of the ma'aseh construct.
• titchatta'u ("you will purify yourselves", H2398) — hithpael imperfect, second person masculine plural; the reflexive stem indicates the subjects act upon themselves (or their possessions) to bring about purification, and the imperfect aspect frames this as an ongoing or required future action.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built as a list of four construct phrases, each introduced by ve-khol ("and every"), naming categories of objects: beged ("garment"), keli-'or ("article of hide"), ma'aseh 'izzim ("product of goat hair"), and keli-'etz ("article of wood"). All four items function as the grammatical object of a single verb placed at the very end of the verse, titchatta'u. This word order — object list first, verb last — is typical of Biblical Hebrew clause structure and creates a cumulative effect, listing all affected materials before stating the required action.

The verb form itself is hithpael, a reflexive/middle stem, combined with imperfect aspect and second-person masculine plural agreement ("you all"). This grammatical choice indicates that the addressees are the ones performing the purification action upon the listed items, rather than a passive process happening to the objects on its own. The four categories cover different materials — textile (beged), tanned hide (keli-'or), goat-hair manufacture (ma'aseh 'izzim), and wood (keli-'etz) — suggesting the instruction is meant to be comprehensive across material types.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the four Hebrew categories with parallel Greek terms (periblēma, "wrap/covering"; skeuos dermatinon, "leather vessel"; ergasian ex aigias, "work from goat[hair]"; skeuos xylinon, "wooden vessel"), preserving the fourfold structure and using a plural imperative-like verb aphagnieite ("you shall purify"), matching the Hebrew's second-person plural.

The Vulgate reorganizes the material differently, framing the passage as concerning "everything from the plunder" (de omni praeda) and grouping "goat skins, hair, and wood" together under one clause before the single verb expiabitur ("it shall be expiated"), which is singular/passive rather than the plural reflexive found in the Hebrew titchatta'u.