Numbers 9:10

Summary

Moses is instructed to tell the Israelites that any man who becomes ritually unclean through contact with a corpse, or who is on a distant journey, may still keep the Passover offering to Yehovah. The verse establishes a conditional case (using "if") for individuals prevented from ordinary Passover observance due to impurity or travel.

Key words

• da.Ber ("speak", H1696) — piel imperative, an intensive command form directing Moses to relay this instruction to the people.
• 'ish 'ish ("a man, a man", H0376G) — the noun is repeated twice in sequence, a Hebrew distributive construction meaning "each/any man," emphasizing that the rule applies individually to whoever meets the condition.
• ta.Me' ("unclean", H2931) — masculine singular adjective describing the state of ritual impurity that triggers the case being addressed.
• Ne.fesh ("a corpse", H5315M) — feminine singular noun; though the word's basic sense is "soul/life," here combined with the preposition la. ("to/because of") it forms an idiom referring to contact with a dead body.
• 'A.sah ("he will observe", H6213A) — qal sequential perfect, continuing the conditional clause begun with yih.yeh- ("he will be") to state the resulting obligation: despite the impurity, the man "shall observe" Passover.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence opens with the imperative da.Ber ("speak") followed by the addressees bene Yisra'el ("sons of Israel") and the infinitive le'mor ("saying"), a standard formula introducing direct divine speech relayed through Moses. The core of the verse is a conditional structure introduced by ki ("if"): the subject is doubled as 'ish 'ish, a grammatical device that distributes the rule to each individual case rather than to the group collectively. The condition itself has two branches joined by 'o ("or"): being tame' la-nefesh ("unclean because of a corpse") or being be-derekh rechokah ("on a distant journey"), the latter applying "to you" (lakhem) or "to your generations" (doroteikhem), extending the rule across future generations as well as the present one.

The apodosis begins with the vav-consecutive form ve-'asah ("and he shall observe"), a sequential perfect that logically continues from the imperfect yihyeh ("he will be") to express the resulting obligation: such a man "shall observe" ('asah, literally "do/make") a pesach ("Passover") la-YHWH ("to/for Yehovah"). The verb 'asah used with pesach is a fixed idiom meaning "to perform/celebrate the Passover," not simply "to make" in a literal sense.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew la-nefesh ("to/because of a corpse," H5315M) is rendered in the LXX as ἐπὶ ψυχῇ ἀνθρώπου ("upon the soul/life of a man") and in the Vulgate as super anima ("over a soul"). Both Greek and Latin preserve the literal sense of nefesh as "soul/life" rather than using a word directly meaning "corpse," while the Hebrew idiom in this context designates contact with a dead body. The repeated Hebrew 'ish 'ish is matched in the LXX by the repeated Ἄνθρωπος ἄνθρωπος, preserving the distributive doubling, whereas the Vulgate uses a single Homo ("a man") without repetition.