Numbers 5:13

Summary

Numbers 5:13 describes a hypothetical situation in which a man has sexual relations with a woman, the act remains hidden from her husband, she becomes ritually defiled, and there is neither a witness against her nor evidence that she was caught in the act. The verse forms one long conditional clause continuing the case introduced in the preceding verse.

Key words

• sha.Khav ("he will lie with", H7901I) — qal sequential perfect; the only active verb in the verse, describing the man's action.
• shikh.vat ("a laying of", H7902) — feminine singular construct forming the idiom shikhvat zera ("a lying of seed"), the standard construct phrase for sexual intercourse.
• ne'.Lam ("it will be hidden", H5956) — niphal sequential perfect; passive form shifting focus from the man's act to its concealment.
• nit.Ma.'ah ("she has made herself unclean", H2930A) — niphal perfect (not sequential); marks a break in the verb chain, presenting her defilement as a completed state rather than a continuing narrative step.
• nit.Pa.sah ("she was caught", H8610) — niphal perfect, negated by lo' ("not", H3808), closing the list of missing evidence.

What the text says

The verse is built as a chain of clauses joined by the narrative vav (H9001), each carrying a sequential perfect verb that continues the conditional scenario begun in verse 12. After the single active qal verb sha.Khav ("he will lie with", H7901I), every subsequent verb — ne'.Lam ("hidden", H5956), nis.te.Rah ("undiscovered", H5641) — appears in the niphal stem, a passive/reflexive form. This grammatical shift moves the sentence's attention away from the man's action and onto the concealment and status of the woman, without the Hebrew specifying who hides what from whom beyond "the eyes of her husband" ('ei.Nei 'i.Sha, construct chain, H5869A + H0376H).

Two verbs, nit.Ma.'ah ("she has made herself unclean", H2930A) and nit.Pa.sah ("she was caught", H8610), break the sequential-perfect chain and appear as plain perfects, joined instead by the simple conjunction ve (H9002) rather than the narrative vav. This marks them as resultant or circumstantial statements rather than sequential narrative steps: her defilement and the absence of being caught are presented as established facts framing the case, not additional events in the sequence. The clause 'ed 'ein bah ("a witness there is not against her", H5707 + H0369) uses a construct-type negative existential rather than a finite verb, stating the total absence of testimony as a bare fact.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the Hebrew's chain of niphal perfects with subjunctive verbs (κοιμηθῇ, λάθῃ, κρύψῃ), framing the whole passage explicitly as a conditional clause, which the Hebrew achieves through vav-sequential perfects without an overt conditional particle. The Vulgate makes the concealment active rather than passive: "maritus deprehendere non quiverit" ("the husband was not able to detect it") turns the Hebrew's passive ne'.Lam ("it will be hidden", H5956) into a statement about the husband's incapacity, where the Hebrew verb itself carries no stated subject causing the concealment.