TO MARK OUT a line — a surveyor’s verb, and one of the rarest in the Hebrew Bible. ⭐ It exists only in Numbers 34: te’ta’u at vv7 and 8, and the reflexive ve-hit’avvitem at v10, which stands nowhere else in the Bible at all. ⚠⚠ And it is spelled exactly like the verb for CRAVING. Searched consonantally, te’ta’u returns six verses: these two, and four where the identical letters mean to desire — Deuteronomy 5:17’s ‘you shall not desire your neighbour’s house’ (English Bibles number it 5:21), and Proverbs 23:3, 23:6 and 24:1. The lexicons list two separate roots that happen to have fallen together, so this is homonymy and not a pun; what is checkable is only that a Hebrew reader marking out the borders of a land Israel is about to take meets the same letters that forbid wanting a neighbour’s field. ⚠ That substitution is Deuteronomy’s and not Exodus’s: Exodus 20:13, already on these pages, uses lo tachmod for the house and for the wife alike. → first discussed at Num 34:7