Numbers 33:21

Summary

This verse records a single stage in the wilderness itinerary of the Israelites: they departed from the place called Livnah ("Libnah", H3841G) and set up camp at Rissah ("Rissah", H7446). It follows the standard formula used throughout Numbers 33 to list successive stations of the journey.

Key words

• va-yis'u ("and they set out", H5265) — qal verb with narrative vav, third person masculine plural; marks the sequential action "and then they departed," continuing the chain of itinerary notices.
• mi-Livnah ("from Libnah", H3841G) — the preposition mi ("from", H9006) attached to the place name, indicating the point of departure.
• va-yachanu ("and they encamped", H2583) — qal verb with narrative vav, third person masculine plural; parallel in form to va-yis'u, marking the resulting action "and then they camped."
• be-Rissah ("at Rissah", H7446) — the preposition be ("at/in", H9003) attached to the place name, indicating the location of encampment.

What the text says

The verse is built on a tight, formulaic two-part structure common to this chapter: a departure clause followed by an encampment clause, each introduced by a narrative vav attached to a qal verb in the third person masculine plural. This grammatical parallelism — va-yis'u ... va-yachanu — creates a rhythmic "they set out ... they encamped" pattern that structures the entire itinerary list in Numbers 33, verse after verse following the same syntactic template.

The two prepositions mi ("from") and be ("at") mark the spatial logic of the sentence: mi signals the point of origin (Livnah) and be signals the point of arrival (Rissah). No verbs of motion other than the two main ones appear; the sentence contains no additional description, motive, or narrative elaboration — it is a bare notation of place-to-place movement, typical of the list format in this chapter. The absence of any qualifying clause reflects the register of a travel record rather than a narrated episode.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders Livnah as Λεμωνά (Lemōna) and Rissah as Δεσσά (Dessa), transliterations that differ noticeably from the Hebrew place names Livnah and Rissah. The Vulgate uses Lebna and Ressa, which are closer to the Hebrew forms than the LXX's renderings but still show minor phonetic variation. The Spanish and English translations (RV1909, SBLIBRE, BSB) follow the Hebrew place names directly as Libna/Libnah and Rissa/Rissah.