---
title: Numbers 15:32 (JPS 1917) — And while the children of Israel were in the wilderness, they found… · tree and pragmatics
description: And while the children of Israel were in the wilderness, they found a man gathering sticks upon the sabbath day. Who acts: children, man. Numbers 15:32 in JPS 1917 with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Numbers 15:32 · JPS 1917

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
And while the children of Israel were in the wilderness, they found a man gathering sticks upon the sabbath day.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** children, man · **What happens:** be, find, gather · **To what, where:** wilderness, man, sticks

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This is Numbers 15:32 · JPS 1917 in the English of the Jewish Publication Society's 1917 translation, from Mova's open Bible corpus. The page gives the sentence's syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies, parsed by Mova and checked by a teacher model — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (children, man), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it. The original of the verse links back to its own tree and to the Targum.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = jps:NUM:600
# text = And while the children of Israel were in the wilderness, they found a man gathering sticks upon the sabbath day.
1	And	and	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
2	while	while	SCONJ	IN	_	10	mark	_	_
3	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	children	child	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	10	nsubj	_	_
5	of	of	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
6	Israel	Israel	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	4	nmod	_	_
7	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	10	cop	_	_
8	in	in	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	wilderness	wilderness	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	advcl	_	_
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
12	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	_
13	found	find	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
14	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
15	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obj	_	_
16	gathering	gather	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	15	acl	_	_
17	sticks	stick	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	16	obj	_	_
18	upon	upon	ADP	IN	_	21	case	_	_
19	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	21	det	_	_
20	sabbath	sabbath	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	21	compound	_	_
21	day	day	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	obl	_	_
22	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	13	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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- form: statement
- act: assert
- voice: narrator
- polarity: none
- teacher: kept the draft

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | past | the children of Israel |  |  | the wilderness |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **find** | past | children *= child* | a man |  |  |  |  | vn discover-84 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent man=Topic |
| 3 | **gather** | gerund | a man *not said here* | sticks |  |  | day |  | vn deduce-97.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent stick=Theme |

<!-- .note -->
One row per clause the reader finds. «not said here»: a role filled from the clause above. «roles by»: a VerbNet class and frame when one fits the verb, else the reader's rules on the tree.

## The Hebrew of this verse {#hebrew}

<!-- .vhe dir=rtl lang=hbo -->
וַיִּהְי֥וּ בְנֵֽי־יִשְׂרָאֵ֖ל בַּמִּדְבָּ֑ר וַֽיִּמְצְא֗וּ אִ֛ישׁ מְקֹשֵׁ֥שׁ עֵצִ֖ים בְּי֥וֹם הַשַּׁבָּֽת׃

[Numbers 15:32: the Hebrew tree, its pragmatics and Targum Onkelos →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/torah/NUM.15.32/)

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**Source.** The Holy Scriptures according to the Masoretic Text, Jewish Publication Society, 1917, from eBible.org: public domain. Sentence `jps:NUM:600` of Mova's parse database.

**The tree and the speech act** come from Mova's cycle: the small model's draft, read by a large model as teacher, passed by Mova's gates (Elamur Cosmic License). **The frames** are read from the tree by Mova's frames reader (`prag`) when this page is built, the chapter read in order, so a pronoun may be resolved from an earlier sentence of the chapter.

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