Numbers 5:7

Summary

Numbers 5:7 describes the required actions after wrongdoing: confession of the offense, full monetary restitution of the wrong plus an additional fifth, and payment of this compensation to the person who was wronged. The verse is built as a chain of sequential verbs describing successive steps in a legal-ritual procedure.

Key words

• hitvaddu ("they will confess", H3034) — hithpael (reflexive/reciprocal) stem, sequential perfect, plural subject; the reflexive form marks confession as an act performed by/for oneself, not a simple declarative statement.
• chatta'tam ("their sin", H2403B) — feminine singular noun in construct state with a plural pronominal suffix, forming "the sin of them."
• heshiv ("he will repay", H7725H) — hiphil (causative) stem, sequential perfect, singular subject; causative form indicates causing something (the debt) to return/be restored.
• rosho ("its sum/head", H7218J) — construct noun with 3ms suffix, idiomatically meaning the principal amount owed.
• yosef ("let him add", H3254H) — hiphil jussive, marking a shift in verbal mood from narrative sequential perfects to a directive form.

What the text says

The verse opens with two verbs joined by narrative vav (H9001) that continue a sequence begun earlier in the passage: hitvaddu ("they will confess") and heshiv ("he will repay"). A notable grammatical feature is the shift in grammatical number: hitvaddu carries a plural subject ("they"), while heshiv, yosef, and natan that follow all carry singular subjects ("he"). The Hebrew text itself moves from a plural verb to singular verbs within the same sequence without explicit subject nouns, relying on suffixes and context to track who acts.

The compensation structure uses a series of construct-state nouns with third-person suffixes — asham-o ("his guilt-offering/compensation"), rosho ("its sum"), chamishito ("its fifth") — stacking possessive relationships tightly without independent possessive pronouns, a compactness Hebrew construct chains allow but which target languages must unpack with prepositions ("of," "its"). The jussive yosef ("let him add") interrupts the perfect-tense sequence, introducing a directive nuance rather than a simple narrative continuation. The final clause, introduced by the relative asher ("which/who", H0834A), identifies the recipient of payment as "the one against whom he was guilty" (asher asham lo), using the same root 'sm ("guilt", H0817/H0816) both for the compensation itself and for the state of being guilty toward someone.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew hitvaddu is plural ("they will confess"), and the Vulgate matches this with confitebuntur (plural) and peccaverint (plural subjunctive). The LXX, however, renders the entire sequence with singular verbs (ἐξαγορεύσει, "he shall confess"; ἀποδώσει, "he shall repay"), aligning with the singular verbs that dominate the rest of the Hebrew sequence rather than preserving the initial plural form found in hitvaddu.