Numbers 34:17

Summary

Numbers 34:17 introduces the two men designated to apportion the land of Canaan among the Israelite tribes: Eleazar the priest and Joshua son of Nun. The verse functions as a formal heading, naming the individuals before their roles are detailed in the following verses.

Key words

• 'Eleh ("these", H0428) — demonstrative particle opening the verse, functioning as a heading that introduces a list of names.
• shemot ("names of", H8034) — feminine plural noun in construct state, linking "names" to "the men" that follows.
• ha'anashim ("the men", H0582) — masculine plural noun with definite article, specifying a defined group as opposed to men in general.
• yinchalu ("they will give as inheritance", H5157) — qal (simple stem) imperfect, third person masculine plural. This is the verbal root nachal, most commonly used in the qal for "to inherit" (to receive a possession). Here it appears with the preposition lakhem ("to you/for you"), producing a sense of these men causing land to pass into possession of others rather than themselves receiving it.
• ben-Nun ("son of Nun", H1121A + H5126) — construct chain identifying Joshua by patronymic, a standard naming convention in the text.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is structured as a nominal heading followed by a relative clause and then the actual names. 'Eleh shemot ha'anashim ("these [are] the names of the men") sets up an identification formula common in list-introductions throughout the Hebrew Bible. The relative clause 'asher yinchalu lakhem 'et-ha'aretz ("who will [nachal-verb] for you the land") specifies the men's function before their names are given — a delayed-identification structure that creates suspense before naming Eleazar and Joshua.

The verb yinchalu is grammatically qal, the stem elsewhere used for "to inherit" in the sense of receiving property (as in taking possession for oneself). In this verse, the object marked by 'et is ha'aretz ("the land"), and the recipients are marked by lakhem ("to/for you"). This construction — with the verb's subject (the two officials) distinct from the beneficiaries marked by lakhem — produces a distributive or causative-like sense within a formally qal (non-causative) verb form: the men cause the land to come into possession of others, rather than possessing it themselves.

Differences between versions

The Vulgate renders yinchalu as dividend ("they will divide"), making the distributive sense explicit through a distinct Latin verb unrelated to "inheriting." The LXX uses κληρονομήσουσιν ("they will inherit/allot"), preserving a verb from the same semantic family as "inheritance" without specifying whether the men receive or distribute. The Spanish RV1909 and BSB render it as "aposesionarán"/"assign... as an inheritance," explicitly making the causative sense clear, while the Hebrew verb form itself remains formally qal rather than a causative stem (such as hiphil).