Numbers 35:33

Summary

Numbers 35:33 warns against polluting the land through bloodshed, stating that blood pollutes the land in which it is shed. The verse further states that the land cannot receive atonement for spilled blood except through the blood of the one who shed it.

Key words

• tachaniifu ("you will pollute", H2610) — hiphil (causative) imperfect, 2nd person masculine plural: the people collectively are the subject who would cause the land to become polluted/profaned.
• ha'aretz ("the land", H0776G) — feminine singular noun, repeated three times in the verse, functioning as the object being defiled and later as the subject unable to receive atonement.
• yachaniif ("it pollutes", H2610) — same hiphil root as word 3, but 3rd person masculine singular imperfect; here "the blood" (ha-dam) is the grammatical subject causing the pollution.
• yekhuppar ("it will be atoned", H3722A) — pual (intensive passive) imperfect: the land is the passive recipient of an action of atonement that the verse says cannot occur under the stated condition.
• shuppakh ("it was shed", H8210H) — pual perfect, describing completed action: the blood's shedding is presented as an accomplished fact contrasted with the ongoing/future verbs surrounding it.

What the text says

The verse is built on a contrast between two occurrences of the hiphil verb chanaf (H2610, "to pollute"): first with the people as subject (tachaniifu, "you will pollute") and second with ha-dam ("the blood", H1818) as subject (yachaniif, "it pollutes"). This grammatical shift moves the agency of pollution from the human community to the blood itself, which is emphasized further by the independent pronoun hu' ("it", H1931) placed before the verb — a construction that gives weight to the blood as the source of the land's contamination.

The second half of the verse turns to the passive voice via the pual forms yekhuppar ("it will be atoned", H3722A) and shuppakh ("it was shed", H8210H). The land, previously the object being polluted, becomes the subject of a negated passive verb — no atonement is possible for it — under the condition introduced by ki im ("except", combining H3588A and H0518B). The final clause uses a construct chain, be-dam shofekho ("by the blood of the one who shed it", H1818 + H8210H participle with suffix H9033), where the participle shofek ("the one who sheds", H8210H) in construct form functions almost as a noun ("the shedder"), naming the sole means by which the land's condition can be addressed according to the Hebrew syntax.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders chanaf (H2610, "to pollute") with φονοκτονήσητε/φονοκτονεῖ, a verb built on the root for "murder/bloodshed" rather than a general term for pollution, narrowing the Hebrew's broader semantic range to a specifically homicide-related action. The Vulgate similarly shifts the sense, rendering the land clause as "quae insontium cruore maculatur" ("which is stained by the blood of the innocent"), introducing the qualifier "innocent" (insontium), a specification not present in the Hebrew text, which simply says ha-dam ("the blood", H1818) without any descriptor.