Numbers 13:14

Hebrew (Westminster Leningrad Codex)

English Translation

Of the tribe of Naphtali, Nahbi the son of Vophsi.

World English Bible · Public Domain

Highlights

2 hapax legomena — only here in the Hebrew Bible
2 first appearances in the Hebrew Bible

Download a study sheet

One document with this verse’s original text, its word-by-word gloss line, the meaning frame, cross-references with their text, attributed commentary, and full source and license credits — printable, and it pastes into notes with its structure intact.

This verse Autodidact and up

Study sheet (.html) Plain text (.txt)

A passage Seminary Student

Up to 50 verses in one chapter. A passage sheet keeps up to 6 commentary sources and 12 cross-references per verse, in the order this page ranks them, and says so on the sheet whenever that leaves anything out. Ask for a single verse and you get the Autodidact verse sheet above.

Everything on this page stays free to read, with no account — the sheet is a download of what is already on screen, not access to it.

Want to remove ads? Support Godless Engineer

Word by word

More ways to search: Search by grammar → Find every occurrence → Compare this word →

Practice this passage: Drill this verse → Learn its vocabulary →

נַחְבִּ֖י

Nachbîy

H5147

“Nahbi”

Noun, Proper

Appears 1× in the Hebrew Bible
First appears here

Full BDB Definition

Origin: from H2247

TWOT: None

Nahbi = "hidden" - son of Vophsi, a Naphtalite, and one of the 12 spies sent to spy out the promised land

About this verse

These counts appear in no published source. They are computed here, from the morphology-tagged text and Lemma’s own curated glosses. What Lemma adds →

5: words
5: distinct lemmas
Pentateuch: section

Notable vocabulary

2 hapax legomena — words that appear only here in the entire Hebrew Bible:

נַחְבִּ֖י Nahbi H5147
וָפְסִֽי Vophsi H2058

First appearance in Scripture

These words make their first canonical appearance in the Hebrew Bible here:

נַחְבִּ֖י Nahbi H5147
וָפְסִֽי Vophsi H2058

Shared distinctive vocabulary

נַפְתָּלִ֔י Naphtali H5321 occurs in 47 verses of the Hebrew Bible. Also found in:

Grammatical profile

5 nouns

Hebrew & Septuagint length

In English translation the verse runs 10 words from the Hebrew and 10 from the Septuagint (LXX English) — the same length.

A rough comparison of the two English renderings, which tokenize alike — not a word-level alignment.

Word counts can differ between the Hebrew and the Greek without any difference in meaning — e.g. the Hebrew direct-object marker אֵת has no separate Greek word, and Greek often adds the article ὁ.

In the original languages it is 5 Hebrew tokens and 6 Greek tokens — but the two are counted differently (Hebrew bundles its prefixes and suffixes into one token; the Greek is in lemma form), so that isn’t a like-for-like length.

Hebrew and Greek witnesses Masoretic Hebrew ↔ Greek Septuagint

The same verse in the two great witnesses to the Old Testament, shown verse-for-verse.

These are two independent witnesses, not word-aligned to each other, and the Septuagint is shown in lemma (dictionary) form.

Hebrew Numbers 13:14 Masoretic · Westminster Leningrad Codex

לְמַטֵּ֣ה נַפְתָּלִ֔י נַחְבִּ֖י בֶּן וָפְסִֽי

Of the tribe of Naphtali, Nahbi the son of Vophsi.

World English Bible · Public Domain

Greek LXX Numbers 13:14 Septuagint · lemma form

ὁ φυλή νεφθαλι ναβι υἱός ιαβι

Of the tribe of Aser, Sathur the son of Michael.

LXX2012 (modern English Septuagint) · Public Domain

Hebrew: Westminster Leningrad Codex (CC BY 4.0). Greek: Septuagint (public domain); English from LXX2012 (modern English Septuagint) (Public Domain). How the Septuagint differs from the Hebrew →

Targum (Aramaic paraphrase)

The Targum is the ancient Jewish Aramaic paraphrase of the Hebrew Scriptures — an interpretive translation, not the Hebrew text itself. Onkelos (literal) and Pseudo-Jonathan (expansive) render the Torah, and Jonathan the Prophets. Coverage is partial: where no permissively-licensed English translation exists for a verse, only the Aramaic is shown. This is verse-level text, not a word-by-word alignment to the Hebrew.

Targum Onkelos Torah (Genesis–Deuteronomy)

לְשִׁבְטָא דְנַפְתָּלִי נַחְבִּי בַּר וָפְסִי

(no public-domain English translation for this verse)

Targum Onkelos — Aramaic: “Onkelos Genesis” (public domain); “Onkelos Exodus” (public domain); “Onkelos Leviticus” (public domain); “Onkelos Numbers” (public domain); “Onkelos Deuteronomy” (public domain). English: “Sefaria Community Translation” (CC0 1.0 (public-domain dedication)); “J.W. Etheridge. The Targums of Onkelos and Jonathan Ben Uzziel on the Pentateuch. London: Longmans, Green, 1862” (public domain). Text via Sefaria.
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan Torah (Genesis–Deuteronomy)

לְשִׁבְטָא דְנַפְתָּלִי עַזְגָד נַחְבִּי בַּר וָפְסִי

for Naphtali, Nachbi bar Vaphsi;

Targum Pseudo-Jonathan — Aramaic: “Targum Jonathan on Genesis” (public domain); “Targum Jonathan on Exodus” (public domain); “Targum Jonathan on Leviticus” (public domain); “Targum Jonathan on Numbers” (public domain); “Targum Jonathan on Deuteronomy” (public domain). English: “The Targum of Jonathan ben Uzziel, trans. J. W. Etheridge, London, 1862” (public domain). Text via Sefaria.

Commentary

Notes on Numbers 13:14 from classic Christian and Jewish commentators (each source and its license shown beneath its notes). The classic Christian expositions comment on the surrounding passage and are grouped to its opening verse, so a note may address several verses; the Jewish commentaries on the Tanakh (Rashi and others) are per-verse, so they appear only where the commentator wrote on this verse.

Lemma curates 59 commentaries, every one of them public domain or Creative Commons licensed, each selected and text-cleaned for this edition rather than reprinted as found. About our sources →

John Gill's Exposition

And what the land is, whether it be fat or lean,.... That is, what the soil of it is, whether it be rich and fertile, or whether it be poor and barren, which would be seen by the fruits it produced, this being now the fruitful season of the year; and so the Targum of Jonathan,"and what is the praise of the land, whether its fruits are fat or lean;''plump and full, rich and juicy, or otherwise, as their grapes, olives, &c. whether it was a land flowing with milk and honey, Exo 33:3, abounding with all good things, and those of the best sort, or not:

whether there be wood thereon or not; timber for building, and other manual operations, or wood for fuel, which are great conveniences in a country; though the Targum of Jonathan interprets it of fruit-bearing trees, which bear fruits fit for eating, or not, as apples, pears, figs, pomegranates, &c.

and be ye of good courage; and not be afraid of being taken up for spies, suggesting, that the power and providence of God would protect and preserve them, in which they should put their trust, and be of good heart:

and bring of the fruit of the land; as a sample and specimen of what it brought forth, which would serve to encourage and animate the people in general, to go up and possess it:

now the time was the time of the first ripe grapes; when they and the other summer fruits were coming to their perfection; and which was a proper season to see them in, and bring a sample of them; though Chaskuni suggests, that it was a more dangerous time to bring off fruit, because the keepers of the vineyards were then there; and hence they needed strengthening, and are bid to be of good courage; the Targum of Jonathan is,"the day on which they went was the twenty ninth of the month Sivan, the time of the first ripe grapes;''and as this month answers to part of our May and part of June, and it being at the latter end of that month, it must be about the middle of June; by which we may observe the forwardness of grapes in the land of Canaan, the time of vintage now drawing nigh.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary

CHAPTER XIII.

George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).

Lesson kit

Teaching starters — assembled from the data on this page, not authored interpretation. Every prompt links to the verse data it draws on. Edit before teaching.

Numbers, in the Pentateuch, opens this verse with 5 words (5 distinct Hebrew lemmas). Its most distinctive word is Nachbîy (“Nahbi”). A historical commentator’s framing appears above. Read the whole chapter for the surrounding context.

Discussion questions

What does “Nahbi” (Nachbîy) contribute to the verse as a whole?
2 words here appear nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible. Why might the author reach for such rare wording?
2 words make their first appearance in Scripture here. What does this debut establish?
How does Genesis 30:8, which shares the word «Naphtali», read alongside this verse?
Compare how John Gill's Exposition and Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary read this verse. Where do they agree or differ?

Things to notice

2 words in this verse appear nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible.
2 words make their first canonical appearance in Scripture here.
This verse counts 5 Hebrew ↔ 6 Greek words.
5 distinct Hebrew lemmas span 5 words in this verse.