Numbers 31:27

Summary

The verse instructs that the war booty be divided between two groups: those who physically took part in the battle, and the rest of the community. The Hebrew marks this division with the paired preposition "between... and between," setting up a two-part split.

Key words

• cha.Tzi.ta ("you will divide", H2673) — qal sequential perfect, second person masculine singular; continues the narrative sequence of commands begun earlier, addressed to a single figure (Moses, per context).
• mal.Ko.ach ("booty", H4455A) — masculine singular noun with the definite article, the object being divided.
• to.fe.Sei ("those skilled of", H8610) — qal participle, masculine plural construct; literally "those grasping/handling," here in construct with ha.mil.cha.Mah ("the battle", H4421), describing the fighters as those who "handled" war.
• yo.tze.'Im ("went out", H3318G) — qal participle, masculine plural, further specifying the to.fe.Sei as those who "went out" la.tza.Va' ("to the war", H6635H).
• bein ("between", H0996G) — appears twice (also as Vein), each time in construct form, structuring the sentence as "between X and between Y."

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built around the verb cha.Tzi.ta ("you will divide", H2673), a qal sequential perfect that carries forward a chain of instructions. Its direct object is ha.mal.Ko.ach ("the booty", H4455A), marked by the object particle 'et (H0853). The division itself is expressed through the repeated construct preposition bein... u.Vein ("between... and between," H0996G), a common Hebrew construction for splitting something into two portions.

The first group is described through a chain of participles in construct: to.fe.Sei ha.mil.cha.Mah ("those skilled of the battle", H8610 + H4421), further qualified by ha.yo.tze.'Im la.tza.Va' ("who went out to the war", H3318G + H6635H). This layered construction — "grasping" combined with "going out" — emphasizes active, physical participation in combat, distinct from mere presence. The second group is simply kol ha.'e.Dah ("all the congregation", H3605 + H5712), the broader community, in construct with kol ("all").

The syntax thus creates a clear structural symmetry: two parties joined by the double bein, one defined by military action (participial phrases), the other by collective identity (a single noun phrase). The Hebrew does not specify equal shares numerically in this verse; the notion of the division being "in two equal parts" is an interpretive addition found in some translations rather than a term present in this verse's Hebrew wording.

Differences between versions

The SBLIBRE explicitly states "en dos partes iguales" ("into two equal parts"), a specification not present in the Hebrew text of this verse, which only uses the bein... u.Vein structure without a numeric or proportional term. The LXX (διελεῖτε, "you will divide") and Vulgate (dividesque ex æquo, "and you shall divide equally") differ slightly: the Vulgate adds ex æquo ("equally"), an explicit note of equal division not lexically present in the Hebrew wording of this verse, while the LXX's διελεῖτε is grammatically plural ("you [pl.] will divide") whereas the Hebrew cha.Tzi.ta is singular.