Numbers 36:7

Summary

The verse establishes that an inheritance belonging to the sons of Israel must not pass from one tribe to another. Each Israelite is to remain attached to the inheritance of his ancestral tribe.

Key words

• tiSov ("it will go about/turn about", H5437) — qal imperfect, feminine subject (the inheritance); denotes movement or transfer, here negated to express prohibition.
• nachaLah ("an inheritance", H5159) — feminine singular noun, the grammatical subject of tiSov.
• mattEh...'el mattEh ("tribe...to tribe", H4294) — the same noun repeated with the preposition min ("from") and 'el ("to"), forming the idiom "from tribe to tribe."
• 'ish ("everyone/a man", H0376) — masculine singular noun functioning distributively, "each one."
• yidbeKu ("they will hold/cling", H1692) — qal imperfect, third person masculine plural, subject bene Yisra'El ("sons of Israel"), describing the action of remaining attached to the ancestral inheritance.

What the text says

The sentence divides into two clauses joined by ki ("for/that", H3588A). The first clause, ve-lo tiSov nachaLah li-vnei Yisra'El mi-mattEh 'el-mattEh, places the negation lo directly before the verb tiSov, making the inheritance (nachaLah) the subject of a prohibited action: it "will not go about" from tribe to tribe. The repetition of mattEh with the prepositions min and 'el creates a mirrored structure emphasizing the boundary between tribes rather than naming specific tribes.

The second clause, introduced by ki, shifts the grammatical subject to 'ish ("each one/every man"), functioning distributively over the collective bene Yisra'El named again at the end of the verse. The phrase be-nachalat mattEh 'avoTav ("in/on the inheritance of the tribe of his fathers") uses two stacked construct chains — nachalat mattEh ("inheritance of tribe") and mattEh 'avoTav ("tribe of his fathers") — linking the individual's holding to a specific ancestral tribal unit. The verb yidbeKu ("they will hold/cling", H1692), plural, agrees with bene Yisra'El as the final subject, producing a structure where the singular 'ish individualizes the rule while the plural verb restates it collectively for "the sons of Israel" as a whole.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders tiSov ("it will go about") with περιστραφήσεται ("will be turned about"), a close semantic match. However, where the Hebrew ends the sentence with yidbeKu bene Yisra'El ("the sons of Israel will hold/cling"), the LXX's Greek clause with προσκολληθήσονται ("will be joined/cling to") appears to have a syntactic gap — the phrase ἐν τῇ κληρονομίᾳ τῆς φυλῆς τῆς πατριᾶς αὐτοῦ lacks a clear verb before καὶ προσκολληθήσονται, differing from the Hebrew's continuous single clause. The Vulgate diverges further by rendering the second clause as omnes enim viri ducent uxores de tribu et cognatione sua ("for all men will take wives from their own tribe and kindred"), introducing the concept of marriage (ducent uxores) not present in the Hebrew verb yidbeKu ("they will hold/cling") or in 'ish be-nachalat mattEh 'avoTav ("each one in the inheritance of the tribe of his fathers").