Numbers 34:2

Summary

Numbers 34:2 opens Moses' instructions to the Israelites regarding their entry into the land of Canaan, introducing the land's borders as an inheritance. The verse establishes the condition ("you are about to enter") and identifies the land by name before the boundary list that follows.

Key words

• tzav ("command", H6680) — Piel imperative, giving intensive/formal force to the command Moses receives to relay.
• ki ("if/that", H3588A) — introduces the clause as a conditional or asseverative statement, framing the entry into Canaan as the premise for what follows.
• ba'im ("about to go", H0935G) — Qal participle, expressing an action in progress or imminent, rather than a completed or simple future action.
• tippol ("it will fall", H5307I) — Qal imperfect, feminine, agreeing with 'aretz ("land"), describing the land's allotment as something that will occur.
• na.cha.lah ("an inheritance", H5159) — feminine singular noun marking the legal/social category under which the land is given.

What the text says

The verse is built as a two-part speech instruction: tzav ("command", H6680) directed at benei Yisra'el ("the people of Israel", H1121G/H3478), followed by ve'amarta ("and you will say", H0559), a sequential perfect that continues the narrative chain begun by the imperative. This grammatical pairing—imperative followed by sequential perfect—is common in legal/instructional Hebrew, framing Moses' command and its content as a single continuous directive.

The clause introduced by ki ("if/that", H3588A) sets up the circumstance: 'atem ba'im ("you are about to go", H0859D + H0935G), using a participle rather than a finite verb, which portrays the entry into Canaan as an event on the verge of happening rather than a hypothetical or distant future action. The land is then specified twice: first as ha'aretz kena'an ("the land, Canaan", H0776G + H3667A), then reintroduced with the demonstrative zot ("this", H2063) — "this is the land that will fall to you as an inheritance." The verb tippol ("it will fall", H5307I) is an imperfect describing the land's future allocation, paired with le.khem ("to you", H9036) and be.nachalah ("as an inheritance", H5159), marking the legal category of possession. The final phrase, 'eretz kena'an ligvuloteiha ("the land of Canaan to its borders", H0776G construct + H3667A + H1367), uses a construct chain to introduce the boundary description that follows in subsequent verses.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew participle ba'im ("about to go") is rendered in the LXX with the present tense εἰσπορεύεσθε ("you are entering"), while the Vulgate uses a future-conditional construction, cum ingressi fueritis ("when you shall have entered"), shifting the nuance from an imminent action to a completed future condition. The Hebrew ki ("if/that") is treated as a temporal conjunction ("when") in both the Vulgate and modern Spanish/English versions (RV1909, SBLIBRE, BSB), rather than as a strict conditional.