Numbers 7:18

Summary

The verse states that on the second day of the tabernacle dedication offerings, Nethanel son of Zuar, leader of Issachar, brought his offering near. It follows the same formulaic structure used for each tribal leader in this chapter.

Key words

• ba-yom ("on the day", H9003+H3117G) — preposition plus noun marking temporal setting; combined with the article ha ("the", H9009) it specifies a particular, sequential day.
• ha-sheni ("the second", H8145) — ordinal number in construct with "day," placing this offering second in a numbered series of tribal presentations.
• hikriv ("he brought near", H7126H) — Hiphil (causative) perfect verb; the causative stem indicates the subject actively causes an object (the offering) to approach, here completed as a finished act.
• ben ("son of", H1121A) — masculine singular construct noun linking Nethanel to his father Zuar, forming a patronymic identification.
• nesi' ("leader of", H5387A) — masculine singular construct noun, here governing "Issachar" to denote the office held by Nethanel over that tribe.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence opens with a temporal phrase, ba-yom ha-sheni ("on the second day"), placing the action within a sequence — this chapter repeats this formula for each of the twelve tribal leaders, changing only the ordinal number and the names. The main verb, hikriv ("he brought near", H7126H), is in the Hiphil perfect, a causative verbal stem that in the tabernacle-offering context regularly describes a leader causing an offering to be presented at the altar or before the sanctuary. Because Hebrew verbs of this type can precede their subject, the sentence order is verb–subject: "he brought near, Nethanel son of Zuar."

The subject is then identified through two construct chains: Netan'el ben-Tzu'ar ("Nethanel son of Zuar") gives paternal lineage, and nesi' Yissaskhar ("leader of Issachar") gives tribal office. Both constructs (ben, "son of," H1121A; nesi', "leader of," H5387A) function grammatically the same way, joining a title or relation to a following proper name without an intervening possessive word, a standard feature of Hebrew noun-construct phrasing.

Differences between versions

The Greek Septuagint (LXXSWETE) expands nesi' Yissaskhar ("leader of Issachar") into "ἄρχων τῆς φυλῆς Ἰσσαχάρ" ("ruler of the tribe of Issachar"), inserting the word "tribe," which has no separate lexical counterpart in the Hebrew construct phrase. The Latin Vulgate similarly reads "dux de tribu Issachar" ("leader from the tribe of Issachar"), also adding "tribu" not directly present as a separate word in the Hebrew. The Hebrew construct nesi' Yissaskhar directly juxtaposes "leader" and "Issachar" without a word meaning "tribe," while both LXX and Vulgate render this relationship more explicitly.