Numbers 31:21

Summary

Eleazar the priest addresses the soldiers who had gone into battle, introducing a statute of the law that Yehovah commanded Moses. The verse functions as a narrative bridge, marking the transition from narrated events to direct legal speech.

Key words

• va-yomer ("and he said", H0559) — narrative vav + qal verb, the standard formula opening reported speech in biblical narrative.
• ba'im ("[those] going/who had gone", H0935G) — qal participle, masculine plural, describing the soldiers as an ongoing category ("the ones going/coming"), attached to anshei ha-tzava ("the men of the army") as a defining clause rather than a finished action.
• chukat ("statute of", H2708) — feminine singular construct noun, grammatically bound to ha-Torah ("the law", H8451), forming the phrase "statute of the law."
• tzivah ("he commanded", H6680) — piel perfect, intensive stem marking a completed, authoritative act of command.
• et (H0853) — direct object marker, syntactically flagging Mosheh ("Moses", H4872) as the recipient of the command, with no independent meaning of its own.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence opens with the narrative verb va-yomer ("and he said"), followed by the subject El'azar ha-kohen ("Eleazar the priest"), and the preposition el ("to") introducing the addressees: anshei ha-tzava ("the men of the army"). This construct phrase is further specified by the participial clause ha-ba'im la-milchamah ("the ones who had gone to the battle"), using the article ha- to turn the participle ba'im into a relative-like description of the men addressed.

The content of Eleazar's speech begins with the demonstrative zot ("this"), which points forward to what follows, functioning as a formal introduction: "this is..." The predicate is chukat ha-Torah ("the statute of the law"), a construct chain linking chukat ("statute of") to ha-Torah ("the law"). This statute is then qualified by a relative clause: asher tzivah Yehovah et-Mosheh ("which Yehovah commanded Moses"), where tzivah is in the piel perfect, indicating a decisive, completed act of command, and et marks Mosheh as the direct object receiving that command. The structure moves from narrative setup to a formal legal announcement, with the demonstrative zot serving as a hinge between the introduction and the ordinance that follows in subsequent verses.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders chukat ha-Torah as τὸ δικαίωμα τοῦ νόμου ("the ordinance/decree of the law"), close to the Hebrew construct phrase. The Vulgate uses praeceptum legis ("precept of the law"), similarly parallel. The Vulgate's rendering of ha-ba'im la-milchamah as "qui pugnaverunt" ("who had fought") shifts the Hebrew participle ba'im ("going/coming," present-oriented) toward a completed past action, differing from the ongoing or generalizing sense of the Hebrew participle.