What Does Numbers 31:14 Mean?
And Moses was angry against the officers of the host, the captains over thousands and over hundreds, who came from the battle.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And Moses was wroth with the officers of the host, with the captains over thousands, and captains over hundreds, which came from the battle.THE KEY
Moses’ anger lands on the appointed leaders, showing that command carries responsibility beyond the battlefield.
THE MEANING
The verse places the reader before Moses’ anger at the commanders returning from battle. The next lines show what follows: Moses orders the killing of the male children and women who have known a man, while the virgin girls are kept alive (Numbers 31:15–18). Accountability and brutal violence meet here in the actions of those who command.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Returning from battle does not place commanders beyond accountability for what their force brings back.
THE ROOT
פְּקֻדֵי
pəqudê
GROWS FROM
פקד
p-q-d
Attend to, oversee, appoint, or muster.
The Hebrew calls them the appointed or mustered ones, making their delegated charge audible beneath “officers.” Moses directs his anger at the leaders who hold that charge, not at an undifferentiated crowd of returning soldiers.
ALSO GROWS
pāqad: Attend to, appoint, or muster.
פָּקַד
The verb behind “officers” ties their position to being assigned and gathered for responsibility.
pəquddāh: Appointment, charge, oversight, or account.
פְּקֻדָּה
This noun from the same root makes the sense of entrusted oversight explicit.
וַיִּקְצֹף
wayyiqṣōp̄
GROWS FROM
קצף
q-ṣ-p
Be angry or indignant.
“was angry against” in this verse is wayyiqṣōp̄. The Hebrew presents anger as an action Moses takes toward the commanders. The same root appears as a noun for anger, holding the flare of indignation and its force in one word family.
ALSO GROWS
qāṣap̄: Be angry or indignant.
קָצַף
This verb appears again when Moses is angry with people who disregard an instruction in Exodus 16:20.
qeṣep̄: Anger or indignation.
קֶצֶף
The noun form shows the same root naming the anger itself, not only the act of becoming angry.
מֹשֶׁה
mōšeh
GROWS FROM
משׁה
m-š-h
Draw out.
The name Moses is linked in Exodus 2:10 to being drawn out of the water. That name stands in this verse beside the violence that follows, holding the memory of rescue and the reality of judgment in the same frame.
ALSO GROWS
māšâ: Draw out.
מָשָׁה
This verb supplies the root linked to Moses’ name.
məšîtihû: I drew him out.
מְשִׁיתִהוּ
In Exodus 2:10, this form explains Moses’ name through the act of drawing him out of the water.
THE PATTERN
Delegated authority remains accountable for what its leaders permit or carry out.
And Moses was angry against the officers of the host, the captains over thousands and over hundreds, who came from the battle.Why then did you not hear and respond to the voice of the LORD? Why did you swoop upon the spoil and do evil in the eyes of the LORD?My brothers, do not become many teachers, knowing that we shall receive a greater judgment.THE THREAD
Yet they did not hear and respond to Moses, and some of them left some of it until the morning, and worms came up in it, and it stank. And Moses grew angry against them.“Was wroth” translates the same Hebrew root, קצף (q-ṣ-p), in both verses. The repeated word links Moses’ anger here with anger over ignored instruction in Exodus, while the violence that follows in Numbers remains starkly its own.
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