Numbers 32:14

Summary

Moses declares that the Reubenites and Gadites have "risen up" in place of their fathers, characterizing them as a "brood of sinful men" whose actions serve only to further inflame Yehovah's anger against Israel. The verse functions as a rebuke, drawing a genealogical parallel between the current generation and the earlier generation that provoked divine anger in the wilderness narrative.

Key words

• kamTem ("you have risen up", H6965B) — qal perfect, 2nd person masculine plural. The completed-action form frames the accusation as an established fact, not a hypothetical.
• tarBut ("a brood of", H8635) — feminine singular construct noun. It governs the following phrase anashim chatta'im, forming the accusatory label attached to the addressees.
• chata'Im ("sinful", H2400) — masculine plural adjective modifying anashim ("men", H0582), producing the phrase "sinful men" as the referent of the construct tarbut.
• sePot ("to add", H5595) — qal infinitive with prefixed li (H9005), expressing purpose or result: "in order to add" / "so as to add."
• charon ("burning of", H2740) — masculine singular construct noun, first term of a double construct chain with af ("anger of", H0639G) and Yehovah (H3068G): "the burning of the anger of Yehovah."

What the text says

The sentence opens with hinneh ("here!", H2009) followed directly by the perfect verb kamTem, a common Hebrew construction that presents a completed situation with immediacy — closer to "look, you have risen" than a neutral past-tense report. The phrase tachat avoteiChem ("in place of your fathers", H8478H + H0001G + suffix) uses a construct noun to express substitution, positioning the addressees as successors who repeat rather than depart from their fathers' pattern.

The core accusation, tarBut anashim chata'im, stacks a construct noun (tarbut) over a noun-adjective pair (anashim chata'im), yielding "a brood of sinful men" as an appositional description of the "you" already named by kamTem. The purpose clause introduced by li-sfot od ("to add still/again", H5595 + H5750) explains the consequence of their rising up: it results in an increase of charon af Yehovah — a double construct chain ("burning of anger of Yehovah") that intensifies the description of divine anger beyond a single noun. The final phrase el Yisra'el ("against Israel", H0413 + H3478) marks the direction of that anger, closing the verse on the collective object of the consequence.

Differences between versions

The LXX (Swete edition as given) reads epi ton thymon tēs orgēs Tyriou epi Israēl, rendering the divine name where the Hebrew has Yehovah (H3068G) with the word Tyriou rather than a term equivalent to "Lord/Kyriou." The Vulgate instead reads furorem Domini, matching the Hebrew's reference to Yehovah's anger with the standard Latin Domini ("of the Lord").