Numbers 32:29

Summary

Moses addresses an unnamed group (likely leaders of the other tribes) about the conditional agreement with the tribes of Gad and Reuben: if their armed men cross the Jordan and fight before Yehovah until the land is subdued, then Gilead will be given to them as a possession. The sentence is built as a conditional clause followed by two consequences in sequence.

Key words

• im ("if", H0518A) — introduces the entire conditional clause governing the rest of the verse; everything that follows depends on this condition being met.
• ya'avru ("they will pass over", H5674A) — qal imperfect, marking the crossing of the Jordan as a future/ongoing action contingent on the condition.
• chalutz ("equipped [man]", H2502B) — qal passive participle, describing the men of Gad and Reuben as already in a state of being armed/equipped, modifying how they cross.
• nikhbeshah ("it will be subdued", H3533) — niphal (passive) sequential perfect; the land itself is the grammatical subject of a passive verb, with no explicit agent named in the Hebrew.
• netatem ("you will give", H5414G) — qal sequential perfect, second person plural, addressed to those Moses is speaking to (not to Gad and Reuben themselves), marking the final action in the conditional chain.

What the text says

The verse opens with the narrative formula va-yomer Mosheh 'aleihem ("and Moses said to them", H0559/H4872/H0413+H9038) — the identity of "them" is established only through pronominal reference, pointing back to whoever Moses addressed in the preceding narrative context, not named again here. The conditional particle im (H0518A) then introduces a single long protasis: "if the sons of Gad and the sons of Reuben cross the Jordan with you... every chalutz for the battle, before the face of Yehovah" (bnei-Gad, H1121G/H1410G; bnei-Reuven, H1121G/H7205; lifnei Yehovah, H6440G/H3068G).

The apodosis follows through two verbs in the sequential perfect (vav-consecutive), a Hebrew construction that continues the logical sequence begun by the imperfect ya'avru: first ve-nikhbeshah ha'aretz lifneikhem ("and the land will be subdued before you", H3533/H0776G), using a niphal (passive) form where the land is acted upon without a stated agent, and then u-netatem lahem et-eretz ha-Gil'ad la-achuzah ("and you shall give to them the land of Gilead as a possession", H5414G/H0776G/H1568G/H0272). The second person plural verb netatem is addressed to Moses's audience, distinguishing them grammatically from the third person bnei-Gad and bnei-Reuven who are the subject of the crossing.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders bnei-Gad u-vnei-Reuven in reverse order — "the sons of Rouben and the sons of Gad" — compared to the Hebrew's Gad-then-Reuben sequence. The LXX also renders nikhbeshah ha'aretz ("the land will be subdued", passive) as katakyrieusete tēs gēs ("you shall subdue/dominate the land"), shifting the Hebrew's passive, agentless construction into an active verb with "you" as explicit subject. The Vulgate similarly shifts to a personal construction, vobis fuerit terra subjecta ("the land will have been subjected to you"), retaining passivity but supplying "to you" as the dative agent, which is not explicit in the Hebrew niphal form.