Numbers 34:4

Summary

The verse continues the description of Israel's southern border, listing a sequence of geographic points the boundary will pass through: turning south of the Ascent of Akrabbim, passing to Zin, reaching south of Kadesh-barnea, going out to Hazar-addar, and passing to Azmon.

Key words

• na.Sav ("it will turn", H5437G) — niphal sequential perfect; the passive/reflexive stem describes the border itself as the subject that "turns," without naming an external agent doing the turning.
• 'a.var ("it will pass on", H5674A) — qal sequential perfect, repeated twice (words 13 and 30) in this verse, giving the sentence its chain-like, itinerary structure.
• totz.'o.Ta ("extremities of", H8444) — feminine plural construct noun with 3rd person suffix ("its extremities"), referring to the outer limits or endpoints of the border line.
• ya.Tza' ("it will go out", H3318I) — qal sequential perfect; another verb of motion describing the border's trajectory continuing to a new point.
• ha.yah ("they will be", H1961) — qal sequential perfect, plural, agreeing with the plural noun totz.'o.Ta ("its extremities"), stating where those extremities are located.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built as a chain of sequential perfect verbs (ve- + perfect), a common construction in Biblical Hebrew for describing successive actions or, here, successive stages of a spatial boundary. Each verb — na.Sav ("it will turn"), 'a.var ("it will pass on," used twice), ha.yah ("they will be"), ya.Tza' ("it will go out") — takes "the border" (ha.ge.Vul, introduced earlier in the verse) as its implicit or explicit subject, personifying the boundary line as something that moves through the landscape from one named place to the next.

The construct phrase totz.'o.Ta ("extremities of") with the 3rd masculine singular suffix refers back to ha.ge.Vul ("the border"), indicating that the border's outer limits are located at a specific point, here specified as south of Kadesh-barnea (ka.Desh bar.Ne.a', H6947). The directional he suffix (H9011) attached to Tzi.na ("Zin-ward") and 'atz.Mo.na ("Azmon-ward") marks direction "toward" a place, a common Hebrew way of indicating motion toward a location without a separate preposition.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders Tzi.na ("toward Zin", place name in the Hebrew) as Ἐννάκ ("Ennak"), a divergent place name from the Masoretic Tzi.na/Zin. The LXX also translates chatzar 'Addar ("Hazar-Addar", one compound place name in the Hebrew) as εἰς ἔπαυλιν Ἀράδ ("into the farmstead/settlement of Arad"), splitting the Hebrew compound name into a common noun ("farmstead," ἔπαυλιν) plus the name "Arad," differing from the Hebrew's treatment of Chatzar-'Addar as a single toponym.