Numbers 32:10

Summary

The verse reports that the anger of Yehovah burned "on that day" and that he then swore an oath, introduced by the formula "saying." The sentence uses two consecutive narrative verbs to mark a sequence: first the kindling of divine anger, then the act of swearing.

Key words

• yichar ("it burned", H2734) — qal narrative form; the verb describing fire/burning is applied idiomatically to anger, with YHWH as the implied agent through the following construct noun.
• af ("anger of", H0639) — masculine singular construct; literally "nose," used idiomatically for anger, grammatically bound to "Yehovah" (construct chain: "anger of Yehovah").
• bayyom hahu ("on that day", H3117 + H1931) — noun with preposition and article, followed by the demonstrative pronoun "that," fixing the event to a specific narrative moment already established in context.
• yishava ("he swore an oath", H7650) — niphal narrative form; the niphal stem of this root is the standard way Biblical Hebrew expresses "to swear," without implying a passive sense in translation.
• lemor ("saying", H0559) — qal infinitive construct with prefixed preposition le; this is the standard formula introducing direct speech that follows.

What the text says

The clause opens with the narrative vav on yichar, linking this event to the preceding narrative flow ("and then it burned"). The subject of the burning is not a personal pronoun but the noun phrase af YHWH, "the anger of Yehovah," in a construct relationship — grammatically, "anger" is what burns, with Yehovah identified as its possessor. This is a fixed idiom in Biblical Hebrew for the onset of divine anger, distinct from constructions where a deity is directly said "to be angry."

The temporal phrase bayyom hahu, "on that day," anchors the action to a specific day within the narrative, using the article and the demonstrative pronoun hu to point back to an already-identified time.

A second narrative verb, yishava, in the niphal stem, follows with its own vav, marking a second sequential action: Yehovah's oath. This is followed by the infinitive lemor, "saying," which functions as a discourse marker introducing what is about to be quoted.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the Hebrew construct phrase "anger of Yehovah burned" as ὠργίσθη θυμῷ κύριος, "the Lord was angered with wrath" — shifting Yehovah from possessor of the anger (Hebrew) to grammatical subject of the verb "to be angered," with θυμῷ ("wrath") added as an instrumental noun. The Vulgate condenses the two Hebrew verbs (yichar and yishava) into a participle plus finite verb, "Qui iratus juravit" ("who, being angry, swore"), and omits an explicit rendering of bayyom hahu, "on that day."