And the LORD hearkened to the voice of Israel may be rendered “The LORD heard the prayer of the people of Israel.”

And gave over the Canaanites: The Septuagint adds the implied phrase “in his [Israel’s] hand” to the end of this clause (see verse 2). Alter does the same by saying “and He gave the Canaanite in his hand,” which means God helped the Israelites to conquer the Canaanites.

And they utterly destroyed them and their cities: For the Hebrew verb rendered utterly destroyed, see the previous verse. The pronoun they refers to the Israelites, and the pronouns them and their refer to the Canaanites. New Century Version makes this clear by saying “The Israelites completely destroyed the Canaanites and their cities.”

So the name of the place was called Hormah: The name Hormah comes from the same Hebrew root as the verb for utterly destroyed (charam). The footnotes in Revised Standard Version and Good News Translation indicate this. Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch includes the meaning of Hormah in the translation itself since it is a significant wordplay: “Hormah (ban).” La Nouvelle Bible Segond also does this with “Hormah (‘Anathema’),” and so does Bible en français courant with “Hormah, which means ‘the ruin.’ ” However, a more precise and meaningful model is “Hormah, which means ‘complete destruction.’ ” This clause is an active construction in Hebrew, which is literally “and he [Israel] called the name of the place Hormah.” Some languages may prefer such a construction here, as in Good News Translation with “and named the place Hormah.” According to 14.45 (see the comments there), the Amalekites and the Canaanites pursued the Israelites as far as Hormah when they defeated them. But this time Hormah marks the Israelites’ victory, the first of many over the peoples of that region. In this context Hormah refers to more than just the town, but also the whole region around it.

Quoted with permission from de Regt, Lénart J. and Wendland, Ernst R. A Handbook on Numbers. (UBS Helps for Translators). Miami: UBS, 2016. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .