Numbers 32:9

Summary

Numbers 32:9 recounts that the scouts went up to the Wadi of Eshcol, saw the land, and then caused the hearts of the Israelites to turn away, so that the people would not enter the land Yehovah had given them.

Key words

• ya'alu ("they went up", H5927) — qal narrative form; a simple past action opening the sequence of events with the narrative vav.
• yani'u ("they discouraged", H5106) — hiphil (causative) narrative form; the causative stem indicates the subject caused an effect on the heart of others, rather than experiencing it themselves.
• lev ("heart of", H3820) — masculine singular construct; grammatically bound to the following noun, forming the phrase "heart of the sons of Israel."
• bilti ("not", H1115) — a noun functioning here with the preposition le (H9005) to form the compound le-vilti ("so as not to"), introducing a negative purpose clause.
• bo' ("to go", H0935) — qal infinitive; paired with le-vilti to express the purpose/result "so as not to go/enter."

What the text says

The verse is built as a chain of three narrative (vav-consecutive) verbs — ya'alu ("they went up"), yir'u ("they saw"), yani'u ("they discouraged") — each introduced by the narrative vav (H9001), which marks sequential action: first the movement to the location, then the visual observation of the land, then the resulting effect on the people. The third verb, yani'u, is in the hiphil stem, a causative form of a root otherwise meaning "to flee" or "to waver" — grammatically, this signals that the scouts did not merely feel discouraged themselves but actively produced that state in others, specifically in lev bene Yisra'el ("the heart of the sons of Israel", H3820 + H1121 construct chain).

The purpose of this discouragement is expressed through the construction le-vilti-vo ("so as not to go"), combining the preposition le with the negative particle bilti and the infinitive bo'. This is a standard Hebrew way of marking a negative purpose or result clause, roughly "in order that... not." The clause is completed by a relative clause, asher natan lahem Yehovah ("which Yehovah had given to them"), where natan (H5414) appears in the perfect, marking an action already completed prior to the main narrative sequence — the land had already been given before the scouts' report caused the people's hearts to turn.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders nachal Eshkol ("wadi of Eshcol") as Φάραγγα βότρυος ("Valley/Ravine of the Cluster"), translating the place name Eshcol (H0812) by its meaning ("cluster," e.g., of grapes) rather than transliterating it, unlike the Hebrew and the Vulgate, which both preserve it as a proper name (vallem botri in the Vulgate also glosses it as "valley of the cluster/grape").