Numbers 5:12

Summary

This verse opens the legal procedure known as the "sotah" law, instructing Moses to speak to the Israelites about a hypothetical case: any man whose wife turns aside from him and commits an act of unfaithfulness against him. The verse sets up the conditional legal scenario without yet describing what actions follow.

Key words

• 'ish 'ish ("a man, a man", H0376G repeated) — the doubling of the same noun is a distributive construction in Hebrew, functioning like "any man" or "whatever man," marking the case as a general legal rule rather than referring to one specific individual.
• ki ("if", H3588A) — a conditional particle introducing the hypothetical legal case that follows; it sets the grammatical frame for the rest of the sotah passage.
• tisteh ("she will turn aside", H7847) — qal imperfect, describing an open, non-completed potential action; the imperfect aspect keeps the situation hypothetical, fitting the conditional clause.
• ma'alah ("she will act unfaithfully", H4603) — qal sequential perfect, continuing the narrative chain begun by tisteh; despite being called "perfect," its sequential function here marks a resulting or subsequent action within the same conditional scenario.
• ma'al ("unfaithfulness", H4604) — a noun built from the same root as the verb ma'alah, forming a cognate-accusative construction ("she commits an unfaithfulness of unfaithfulness"), a Hebrew device that intensifies or specifies the verb's action.

What the text says

The verse consists of two commands to Moses — daber ("speak", H1696G, piel imperative) followed by ve-'amarta ("and you will say", H0559, sequential perfect) — a common formula in legal instructions where the second verb continues the force of the first. The legal case itself begins with the doubled noun 'ish 'ish, a distributive repetition indicating "any man" rather than a specific person, followed by the conditional particle ki, which introduces the scenario.

The core action is expressed through two verbs linked by the sequential vav: tisteh (imperfect, "she turns aside") and ma'alah (sequential perfect, "she acts unfaithfully"). This verb pairing describes a two-stage or intensifying action — first a deviation, then an unfaithful act — reinforced by the cognate noun ma'al ("unfaithfulness") sharing the same root as ma'alah. This root repetition (verb + cognate noun) is a Hebrew intensifying pattern not easily rendered in translation, producing a phrase closer to "she commits an act of unfaithfulness" with added emphasis on the nature of the offense.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew's distributive doubling 'ish 'ish is reflected in the Greek text's repeated form ("ἀνδρὸς ἀνδρὸς"), preserving the "any man" sense structurally. The Vulgate, however, renders the clause as a single relative construction — "Vir cujus uxor erraverit... maritumque contemnens" ("a man whose wife has erred... despising her husband") — collapsing the Hebrew's two sequential verbs (tisteh, ma'alah) and the cognate noun ma'al into a simpler two-part description without the root-repetition emphasis. Modern translations (BSB, RV1909, SBLIBRE) similarly smooth the doubled noun into "any man" and the two Hebrew verbs into "goes astray and is unfaithful," without indicating the cognate-accusative construction with ma'al.