---
title: Numbers 20:21 (JPS 1917) — Thus Edom refused to give Israel passage through his border; wherefo… · tree and pragmatics
description: Thus Edom refused to give Israel passage through his border; wherefore Israel turned away from him. Who acts: Edom, Israel. Numbers 20:21 in JPS 1917 with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/torah/jps/NUM.747/)

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# Numbers 20:21 · JPS 1917

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Thus Edom refused to give Israel passage through his border; wherefore Israel turned away from him.

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**Who acts:** Edom, Israel · **What happens:** refuse, not give, turn away · **To what, where:** passage, Israel, border

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This is Numbers 20:21 · 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 (Edom, Israel), 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:747
# text = Thus Edom refused to give Israel passage through his border; wherefore Israel turned away from him.
1	Thus	thus	ADV	RB	_	3	advmod	_	_
2	Edom	Edom	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	refused	refuse	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	to	to	PART	TO	_	5	mark	_	_
5	give	give	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	xcomp	_	_
6	Israel	Israel	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	5	iobj	_	_
7	passage	passage	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obj	_	_
8	through	through	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
9	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	10	nmod:poss	_	_
10	border	border	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl	_	_
11	;	;	PUNCT	:	_	14	punct	_	_
12	wherefore	wherefore	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	14	advmod	_	_
13	Israel	Israel	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	14	nsubj	_	_
14	turned	turn	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	parataxis	_	_
15	away	away	ADV	RB	_	14	advmod	_	_
16	from	from	ADP	IN	_	17	case	_	_
17	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	14	obl	_	_
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **refuse** | past | Edom |  |  |  |  | thus *property* | vn reject-77.2 «NP V S\_ING»: agent=Agent clause=Theme |
| 2 | **not** **give** | to-infinitive | Edom *not said here* | passage | Israel | Edom's border |  |  | vn give-13.1-1 «NP V NP-Dative NP»: agent=Agent israel=Recipient passage=Theme |
| 3 | **turn away** | past | Israel |  |  |  |  | from Edom; away, wherefore *property* | vn banish-10.2 «NP V NP PP.source»: agent=Agent from he=Source |

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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}

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וַיְמָאֵ֣ן ׀ אֱד֗וֹם נְתֹן֙ אֶת־יִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל עֲבֹ֖ר בִּגְבֻל֑וֹ וַיֵּ֥ט יִשְׂרָאֵ֖ל מֵעָלָֽיו׃פ

[Numbers 20:21: the Hebrew tree, its pragmatics and Targum Onkelos →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/torah/NUM.20.21/)

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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:747` 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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