Numbers 32:22

Hebrew (Westminster Leningrad Codex)

English Translation

and the land is subdued before Yahweh; then afterward you shall return, and be guiltless towards Yahweh, and towards Israel; and this land shall be to you for a possession before Yahweh.

World English Bible · Public Domain

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וְנִכְבְּשָׁ֨ה

kâbash

H3533

“and · to subdue”

Conjunction + Verb, Niphal, Sequential Perfect, 3rd Person, Feminine, Singular

Appears 15× in the Hebrew Bible
First appears at Genesis 1:28

Full BDB Definition

Origin: a primitive root

TWOT: 951

to subject, subdue, force, keep under, bring into bondage - (Qal) - to bring into bondage, make subservient - to subdue, force, violate - to subdue, dominate, tread down - (Niphal) to be subdued - (Piel) to subdue - (Hiphil) to bring into bondage

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 →

17: words
11: distinct lemmas
Pentateuch: section

Notable vocabulary

The rarest word here is וְנִכְבְּשָׁ֨ה to subdue H3533 — appearing just 15 times in the whole Hebrew Bible.

Shared distinctive vocabulary

וְנִכְבְּשָׁ֨ה to subdue H3533 occurs in 13 verses of the Hebrew Bible. Also found in:

Grammatical profile

4 verbs
9 nouns
1 adjective
1 pronoun
1 preposition
1 adverb

Verb forms

וְנִכְבְּשָׁ֨ה Niphal · Sequential Perfect
תָּשֻׁ֔בוּ Qal · Imperfect
וִהְיִיתֶ֧ם Qal · Sequential Perfect
וְ֠הָיְתָה Qal · Sequential Perfect

Repetition

Words recur within this verse — often emphatic in Hebrew:

יְהוָה֙ LORD H3068 ×3
הָאָ֜רֶץ land H776 ×2
לִפְנֵ֤י face H6440 ×2
וִהְיִיתֶ֧ם to be H1961 ×2

Hebrew & Septuagint length

In English translation the verse runs 32 words from the Hebrew and 37 from the Septuagint (LXX English) — closely comparable.

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 17 Hebrew tokens and 28 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.

Cross-references

Topical passages linked to Numbers 32:22 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge — connected by theme and wording, ordered by reader-vote popularity; previews shown in the World English Bible.

Joshua 22:4 Now Yahweh your God has given rest to your brothers, as he spoke to them: therefore now turn you, and get you to your tents, to the land of your possession, which Moses the servant of Yahweh gave you beyond the Jordan.
Joshua 22:9 The children of Reuben and the children of Gad and the half-tribe of Manasseh returned, and departed from the children of Israel out of Shiloh, which is in the land of Canaan, to go to the land of Gilead, to the land of their possession, which they owned, according to the commandment of Yahweh by Moses.
Deuteronomy 3:20 until Yahweh give rest to your brothers, as to you, and they also possess the land which Yahweh your God gives them beyond the Jordan: then shall you return every man to his possession, which I have given you.
Joshua 1:15 until Yahweh have given your brothers rest, as [he has given] you, and they also have possessed the land which Yahweh your God gives them: then you shall return to the land of your possession, and possess it, which Moses the servant of Yahweh gave you beyond the Jordan toward the sunrise.
Joshua 13:8 With him the Reubenites and the Gadites received their inheritance, which Moses gave them, beyond the Jordan eastward, even as Moses the servant of Yahweh gave them:
Deuteronomy 3:12–18 This land we took in possession at that time: from Aroer, which is by the valley of the Arnon, and half the hill-country of Gilead, and the cities of it, gave I to the Reubenites and to the Gadites:
Joshua 2:19 It shall be, that whoever shall go out of the doors of your house into the street, his blood shall be on his head, and we shall be guiltless: and whoever shall be with you in the house, his blood shall be on our head, if any hand be on him.
Joshua 10:30 and Yahweh delivered it also, and the king of it, into the hand of Israel; and he struck it with the edge of the sword, and all the souls who were therein; he left none remaining in it; and he did to the king of it as he had done to the king of Jericho.

Joshua 10:42 All these kings and their land did Joshua take at one time, because Yahweh, the God of Israel, fought for Israel.
Joshua 11:23 So Joshua took the whole land, according to all that Yahweh spoke to Moses; and Joshua gave it for an inheritance to Israel according to their divisions by their tribes. The land had rest from war.
Joshua 13:29–32 Moses gave [inheritance] to the half-tribe of Manasseh: and it was for the half-tribe of the children of Manasseh according to their families.
Joshua 18:1 The whole congregation of the children of Israel assembled themselves together at Shiloh, and set up the tent of meeting there: and the land was subdued before them.
2 Samuel 3:28 Afterward, when David heard it, he said, I and my kingdom are guiltless before Yahweh forever of the blood of Abner the son of Ner:
Psalms 44:1–4 We have heard with our ears, God; Our fathers have told us, What work you did in their days, In the days of old.
Psalms 78:55 He also drove out the nations before them, Allotted them for an inheritance by line, And made the tribes of Israel to dwell in their tents.

Cross-references courtesy of OpenBible.info (CC BY 4.0).

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 32:22 Masoretic · Westminster Leningrad Codex

וְנִכְבְּשָׁ֨ה הָאָ֜רֶץ לִפְנֵ֤י יְהוָה֙ וְאַחַ֣ר תָּשֻׁ֔בוּ וִהְיִיתֶ֧ם נְקִיִּ֛ים מֵיְהוָ֖ה וּמִיִּשְׂרָאֵ֑ל וְ֠הָיְתָה הָאָ֨רֶץ הַזֹּ֥את לָכֶ֛ם לַאֲחֻזָּ֖ה לִפְנֵ֥י יְהוָֽה

and the land is subdued before Yahweh; then afterward you shall return, and be guiltless towards Yahweh, and towards Israel; and this land shall be to you for a possession before Yahweh.

World English Bible · Public Domain

Greek LXX Numbers 32:22 Septuagint · lemma form

καί κατακυριεύω ὁ γῆ ἔναντι κύριος καί μετά οὗτος ἀποστρέφω καί εἰμί ἀθῷος ἔναντι κύριος καί ἀπό ἰσραήλ καί εἰμί ὁ γῆ οὗτος σύ ἐν κατάσχεσις ἔναντι κύριος

and the land shall be subdued before the Lord, then afterwards you⌃ shall return, and be guiltless before the Lord, and as regards Israel; and this land shall be to you for a possession before the Lord.

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)

וְתִתְכְּבֵשׁ אַרְעָא קֳדָם עַמָא דַיְיָ וּבָתַר כֵּן תְּתוּבוּן וּתְהוֹן זַכָּאִין מִן קֳדָם יְיָ וּמִיִשְׂרָאֵל וּתְהֵי אַרְעָא הָדָא לְכוֹן לְאַחֲסָנָא קֳדָם יְיָ

(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)

וְתִתְכְּבַשׁ אַרְעָא קֳדָם עַמָא דַיְיָ וּמִן בָּתַר כְּדֵין תְּתוּבוּן וּתְהוֹן זַכָּאִין מִן קֳדָם יְיָ וּמִיִשְרָאֵל וּתְהֵי אַרְעָא הָדָא לְכוֹן לְאַחְסָנָא קֳדָם יְיָ

and the land be subdued before the people of the Lord, then afterwards you shall return, and be acquitted before the Lord and by Israel; and this land shall be yours for an inheritance before the Lord.

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 32:22 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 →

Geneva Bible (1599)

Geneva Bible translators

The Lord will grant you this land which ye require, Josh. 1:15.

Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain. Text via Bolls.life.

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(22) And this land shall be your possession before the Lord.—See Deu_3:12-20; Jos_13:15-33.

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

John Gill's Exposition

But if ye will not do so,.... As they promised they would, and Moses insisted on it that they should:

behold, ye have sinned against the Lord making such a request, and not fulfilling the conditions on which it was granted:

and be sure your sin will find you out; fly in their faces, accuse them in their consciences, charge and load them with guilt, and bring deserved punishment upon them: sin may be put, as it often is, for the punishment of sin, which sooner or later will find out and come upon the impenitent and unpardoned sinner.

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

Matthew Poole's English Annotations

Before the Lord, i.e. by his presence, and gracious and powerful assistance.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

Whedon's Commentary on the Bible

Daniel D. Whedon

22. Guiltless before the Lord,… Israel — Obedience to God can never bring a man into collision with any righteous human law, or be detrimental to any real good of society. We cannot keep the first table of the law without keeping the second also.

Possession before the Lord — With the approval of Jehovah.

Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

John Wesley's Explanatory Notes

Before the Lord - By his presence and gracious and powerful assistance.

John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.

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 17 words (11 distinct Hebrew lemmas). Its most distinctive word is kâbash (“to subdue”). A historical commentator’s framing appears above. Read the whole chapter for the surrounding context.

Discussion questions

The word kâbash carries the sense “to subdue.” How does it shape the verse?
How does Genesis 1:28, which shares the word «to subdue», read alongside this verse?
What does the repetition of “LORD” (3× in this one verse) do in this verse?
These translations render this verse differently. What is at stake in choosing one wording over another?
«וְנִכְבְּשָׁ֨ה» is a Niphal Sequential Perfect verb. How does that grammatical form shape the action described?
Compare how Geneva Bible (1599) and Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers read this verse. Where do they agree or differ?

Things to notice

This verse counts 17 Hebrew ↔ 28 Greek words.
These translations choose different wording for 11 words in this verse.
“LORD” occurs 3× in this single verse.
11 distinct Hebrew lemmas span 17 words in this verse.