Numbers 32:4

Summary

The Gadites and Reubenites describe the land Yehovah had defeated on behalf of Israel's community as territory naturally suited for livestock, and state that they, as servants of Moses, possess livestock themselves. The verse is their justification for requesting this specific territory rather than land across the Jordan.

Key words

• hikkah ("he defeated", H5221) — Hiphil perfect of the causative verb, indicating Yehovah caused a decisive, completed military strike; the subject is explicitly Yehovah (H3068G).
• lifnei ("before", from H6440G) — construct form of "face," here functioning prepositionally to mean "in the presence of" or "on behalf of" the 'adat Yisra'el ("congregation of Israel", H5712/H3478).
• 'eretz miqneh ("land of livestock") — a construct chain: 'eretz (H0776G) governs miqneh (H4735), producing the idiomatic sense "a land [suited] for livestock," not merely "a land that has livestock."
• hi' ("it/she", H1931) — the independent pronoun functions as the copula in this nominal clause, since Biblical Hebrew has no verb "to be" in the present tense; it links ha'aretz to the predicate 'eretz miqneh.
• la'avadeikha ("to/for your servants", H5650 + H9021) — the preposition la plus the plural construct noun with a 2nd person masculine singular suffix; combined with the final miqneh, it forms a second nominal clause meaning "your servants have livestock."

What the text says

The verse consists of two linked nominal (verbless) clauses following an initial relative clause. The relative clause "ha'aretz 'asher hikkah Yehovah lifnei 'adat Yisra'el" identifies the land by referencing a past military action completed by Yehovah (Hiphil perfect hikkah), acting "before" or "on behalf of" the congregation of Israel. The main predication then follows without any finite verb: 'eretz miqneh hi' — "a land of livestock, it [is]" — where the pronoun hi' supplies the grammatical link between subject and predicate. The construct phrase 'eretz miqneh does not simply state that livestock exists there; it characterizes the land's essential quality as suited for grazing.

The second clause, "ve-la'avadeikha miqneh," mirrors the construction: no verb "to have" exists in Hebrew, so possession is expressed through the preposition la ("to/for") attached to "your servants," followed by the noun miqneh. Literally, "and to your servants [is] livestock" — the possessive relationship is expressed spatially/dative rather than with a possessive verb.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew hikkah ("he struck/defeated") is rendered in the LXX as paradedōken ("he handed over/delivered"), shifting the verb's sense from a military strike to a transfer of territory. The Vulgate's percussit ("he struck") aligns more closely with the Hebrew's martial sense of hikkah.