Numbers 33:52

וְהוֹרַשְׁתֶּם אֶת־כָּל־יֹשְׁבֵי הָאָרֶץ מִפְּנֵיכֶם וְאִבַּדְתֶּם אֵת כָּל־מַשְׂכִּיֹּתָם וְאֵת כָּל־צַלְמֵי מַסֵּֽכֹתָם תְּאַבֵּדוּ וְאֵת כָּל־בָּמֹתָם תַּשְׁמִֽידוּ׃

✦ Hebrew interlinear

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✦ The same verse in five languages

Hebrew

וְה֨וֹרַשְׁתֶּ֜ם אֶת־כָּל־יֹשְׁבֵ֤י הָאָ֙רֶץ֙ מִפְּנֵיכֶ֔ם וְאִ֨בַּדְתֶּ֔ם אֵ֖ת כָּל־מַשְׂכִּיֹּתָ֑ם וְאֵ֨ת כָּל־צַלְמֵ֤י מַסֵּֽכֹתָם֙ תְּאַבֵּ֔דוּ וְאֵ֥ת כָּל־בָּמֹתָ֖ם תַּשְׁמִֽידוּ׃

Greek (Septuagint)

καὶ ἀπολεῖτε πάντας τοὺς κατοικοῦντας ἐν τῇ γῇ πρὸ προσώπου ὑμῶν, καὶ ἐξαρεῖτε τὰς σκοπιὰς αὐτῶν, καὶ πάντα τὰ εἴδωλα τὰ χωνευτὰ αὐτῶν ἀπολεῖτε αὐτά, καὶ πάσας τὰς στήλας αὐτῶν ἐξαρεῖτε.

Greek text from Swete's edition, CC BY-SA 4.0

Latin (Vulgate)

disperdite cunctos habitatores terræ illius: confringite titulos, et statuas comminuite, atque omnia excelsa vastate,

Spanish

deberán expulsar a todos los habitantes del país. Destruirán todos sus ídolos de piedra y sus imágenes de metal, y derribarán todos sus altares paganos.

Classic Spanish (Reina-Valera 1909)

Echaréis á todos los moradores del país de delante de vosotros, y destruiréis todas sus pinturas, y todas sus imágenes de fundición, y arruinaréis todos sus altos;

English

you must drive out before you all the inhabitants of the land, destroy all their carved images and cast idols, and demolish all their high places.

✦ What the text says

Summary

This verse commands the Israelites to dispossess the land's inhabitants and destroy three categories of cultic objects: carved images, cast-metal images, and high places. The Hebrew alternates between two grammatical tenses to convey a continuous command sequence.

Key words

Ho.rash.Tem ("you will dispossess", H3423) — hiphil (causative) sequential perfect; opens the command chain, "cause to be dispossessed/inherit-out."
yo.she.Vei ("inhabitants of", H3427) — qal participle, construct plural; describes those currently dwelling in the land, grammatically linked to ha'aretz ("the land").
mas.ki.yo.Ta ("carved images", H4906) — feminine plural construct noun with 3rd person plural suffix ("their carved images").
tzal.Mei / ma.se.kho.Ta ("images of", H6754 / "molten metal", H4541A) — a construct chain, "images of their molten metal," specifying cast-metal objects distinct from the carved ones.
ba.mo.Ta ("high places", H1116) — feminine plural construct with suffix, the third and final object category, paired with the verb tash.Mi.du ("you will demolish", H8045).

What the text says

The verse is built as a chain of four verbs governing three groups of objects. The first two verbs, Ho.rash.Tem ("you will dispossess") and 'I.bad.Tem ("you will destroy", H0006, piel sequential perfect), continue a narrative sequence begun earlier in the chapter. The final two verbs, te.'a.Be.du and tash.Mi.du, shift to imperfect forms but retain the same commanding force — a common feature of Biblical Hebrew legal/instructional style where perfect and imperfect verb forms alternate without changing the imperative sense.

Notably, the object of te.'a.Be.du — "all the images of their molten metal" (kol tzalmei massekhotam) — is placed before the verb rather than after, unlike the other two clauses where verb precedes object. This fronting places emphasis on the cast images as a distinct target, separating them syntactically from the carved images (maskiyyotam) named in the previous clause, even though both are governed by the same root H0006 ("destroy") in different conjugations.

Differences between versions

The Septuagint renders maskiyyotam ("their carved images") as σκοπιὰς ("watchtowers/lookout points"), a rendering that diverges sharply from the Hebrew term for carved cultic images. The LXX also uses στήλας ("pillars/steles") where the Hebrew has bamotam ("their high places"), and pairs the verb ἐξαρεῖτε ("you will remove") with this term rather than a verb of demolition. The Vulgate uses "confringite titulos" ("break the inscriptions/monuments") for maskiyyotam and "omnia excelsa vastate" ("lay waste all the high places") for bamotam, the latter aligning more closely with the Hebrew's semantic category of elevated cultic sites than the LXX's "pillars."

This explanation describes the text using linguistic data; it adds no doctrine or confessional interpretation.