Numbers 35:28

Summary

The verse states that the killer (ha-rotzeach, H7523) must remain in his city of refuge until the death of the high priest, and only after the high priest's death may he return to the land of his own possession. The sentence is built as a conditional/causal clause followed by a temporal clause and a resulting action.

Key words

• ki ("for/if", H3588A) — introduces the clause as a condition or reason, connecting this verse to the preceding legal instruction.
• ir miklato ("city of his refuge", H5892B + H4733) — a construct chain, "city of refuge," with a possessive suffix "his," marking the specific city assigned to this individual.
• yeshev ("he will remain", H3427) — qal imperfect, expressing an ongoing or required future state of dwelling, not a single completed action.
• ha-rotzeach ("the killer", H7523) — a qal participle used substantively ("the one who kills"), functioning as the subject of the final clause.
• yashuv ("he will return", H7725G) — qal imperfect from the root shuv ("to return"), marking the future action permitted only after the stated condition is met.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is organized around two time markers built from the same phrase, mot ha-kohen ha-gadol ("the death of the high priest", H4194 + H3548 + H1419A), repeated in lines 8–12 and 15–19. The first occurrence sets the boundary for the verb yeshev ("he will remain," H3427): the killer's residence in the city of refuge continues 'ad ("until", H5704) that death. The second occurrence, introduced by ve-'acharei ("and after", H9002 + H310A), marks the starting point for the second verb, yashuv ("he will return," H7725G): return becomes possible only after that same death.

Both verbs, yeshev and yashuv, are qal imperfects, a form that in Biblical Hebrew can express ongoing, habitual, or future action. Here they frame the two states as bounded by the single event of the high priest's death, without specifying whether the residence is presented as an obligation or simply a factual expectation — the imperfect alone does not encode obligation morphologically. The subject of the return clause is ha-rotzeach, a substantized participle ("the one killing" or "the killer"), which grammatically ties the action of return back to the person previously confined, rather than naming him with a separate noun.

Differences between versions

The Vulgate renders the first clause with debuerat...residere ("he ought to have resided"), introducing an explicit sense of obligation that is not morphologically present in the Hebrew imperfect yeshev, which simply states future/ongoing residence without a modal auxiliary. The LXX instead uses an imperative-like form, κατοικείτω ("let him dwell"), followed by ἕως ἄν ἀποθάνῃ ("until he might die"), a subjunctive construction expressing indefinite futurity, structurally closer to the Hebrew's temporal 'ad mot. The SBLIBRE Spanish translation follows the Vulgate's obligation nuance ("debía haberse quedado"), while the BSB and RV1909 render the Hebrew imperfects as straightforward future/modal statements ("must remain" / "deberá habitar"), closer to the Hebrew's own verbal form.