Numbers 31:23

Summary

The verse gives instructions for purifying items (likely spoils of war) after contact with impurity: things that can go through fire are to be passed through fire to become pure, then further purified with the "waters of niddah"; things that cannot go through fire are to be passed through water instead.

Key words

• yavo' ("it will go", H0935G) — qal imperfect, used twice to describe what "goes into" the fire; the text distinguishes items by whether they enter fire or not, rather than explicitly stating "resist" or "withstand" as some translations render it.
• ta'aviru ("you will make pass", H5674A) — hiphil (causative) imperfect, second person plural; the same causative verb governs both the fire-treatment and the water-treatment clauses, framing both actions as something the addressees actively perform.
• taher ("it will be pure", H2891) — qal sequential perfect, continuing the narrative chain after the fire-passage; it marks the resulting state after passing through fire.
• niddah ("impurity", H5079) — feminine singular noun in construct with mei ("water of", H4325G); the construct phrase mei niddah ("waters of impurity") names the specific water used in the second purification step.
• yitchatta' ("it will purify itself", H2398) — hithpael imperfect, giving a reflexive/self-directed nuance to the purification by water, distinct from the qal taher used for fire-purification.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built as two parallel relative-clause constructions. The first, kol davar asher yavo va-esh ("every thing that will go into the fire"), is followed by the causative command ta'aviru va-esh ("you will make [it] pass through the fire") and the resulting state ve-taher ("and it will be pure"). The adverb akh ("nevertheless", H0389) then introduces a qualification: even after fire-purification, the item must still undergo treatment be-mei niddah ("by waters of niddah"), described with the hithpael verb yitchatta', which frames the water-treatment as a distinct, additional process from the qal-verb purification by fire.

The second clause mirrors the first in structure: vekol asher lo yavo va-esh ("and all that will not go into the fire") receives the same causative verb ta'aviru, but directs it toward bamayim ("in the water") instead of fire. The repetition of ta'aviru across both clauses ties the two procedures together grammatically, while the vocabulary distinguishes the outcomes: taher for the fire process, yitchatta' for the water process.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew states items "go into" (yavo') the fire, without an explicit verb of capacity. The Vulgate renders this as "quod potest transire per flammas" ("what CAN pass through the flames"), adding an explicit notion of ability. The LXX's opening clause, "πᾶν πρᾶγμα διελεύσεται ἐν πυρί" ("every item will pass through fire"), lacks the conditional relative clause found in the Hebrew (asher yavo va-esh), stating flatly that every item passes through fire rather than restricting this to items that go into fire. For mei niddah ("waters of niddah"), the LXX reads "ὕδατι τοῦ ἁγνισμοῦ" ("water of purification"), a different lexical choice from the Hebrew term niddah, which elsewhere denotes impurity/separation.