Numbers 31:42

Summary

This verse identifies a specific portion of the war spoils: the half belonging to "the sons of Israel" (the general population), as distinct from the half belonging to the combatants. It restates that Moses himself performed the division between these two groups.

Key words

• machatzit ("half of", H4276) — feminine singular construct noun, marking a precise fractional portion, here linked to "the sons of Israel."
• chatzah ("he had divided", H2673) — Qal perfect, third person masculine singular; a completed action attributed directly to Moses as subject.
• tzove'im ("those going to war" / "warring", H6633) — Qal participle, masculine plural, with definite article; describes an ongoing or characteristic state ("the ones who wage war") rather than a single completed action.
• asher ("which/that", H0834A) — relative particle introducing a subordinate clause that specifies which "half" is meant.
• anashim ("men", H0582) — masculine plural noun, referring generically to the male combatants, further defined by the following participle.

What the text says

The verse opens with the conjunction ve ("and") attached to the preposition mi ("from"), governing machatzit ("half of") in construct with bnei Yisra'el ("sons of Israel"). This construct chain identifies the specific share under discussion: the half assigned to the broader Israelite community, as opposed to the fighting men. The relative clause introduced by asher ("which") then specifies that this portion is the one chatzah ("he had divided") — a Qal perfect verb with Moses as its explicit subject, indicating a discrete, completed act of division performed by him personally.

The final clause uses min ("from") plus the definite article and anashim ha-tzove'im ("the men, the ones going to war"). Here tzove'im is a participle, not a finite past-tense verb: grammatically it presents the warriors as a class defined by their ongoing function ("those who campaign" or "those who wage war") rather than narrating a completed event. This participial construction sets up a categorical contrast — the half of "the sons of Israel" versus the half of "the men who are warriors" — rather than simply reporting two sequential actions.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew participle tzove'im ("the ones warring") is rendered in most versions as a finite past action ("who had gone to war," Vulgate qui in praelio fuerant, "who had been in battle"), which shifts the participial, class-defining nuance of the Hebrew into a completed-event framing. The LXX's πολεμιστῶν ("of the warriors") uses a noun rather than a participial clause, similarly nominalizing the category rather than preserving the Hebrew's verbal aspect. The SBLIBRE paraphrase ("the half that fell to the rest of the Israelites") introduces an interpretive gloss not present in the Hebrew construct phrase itself, which simply reads "half of the sons of Israel."