Genesis 32:15

Summary

This verse continues the list of animals Jacob selects as a gift for Esau: thirty nursing camels with their young, forty cows, ten bulls, twenty female donkeys, and ten male donkeys. The sentence is a bare enumeration without verbs, each animal type followed by its quantity.

Key words

• ge.ma.Lim ("camels", H1581) — plural noun opening the list, unmarked for gender in this form but referring to the herd as a whole.
• mei.ni.Kot ("suckling", H3243) — hiphil participle, feminine plural, describing the camels as actively nursing (causative sense: "causing to suck," i.e., mother camels with milk).
• ve.nei.Hem ("their young", H1121 + suffix) — construct noun with 3mp pronominal suffix, "sons of them," referring to the camel-calves as a distinct but attached unit before the number "thirty" is given.
• fa.Rim ("bulls", H6499) — masculine plural, followed immediately by 'a.sa.Rah ("ten", H6235), a feminine-form numeral applied to a masculine noun, a common pattern for numerals 3–10 in Biblical Hebrew.
• '.ya.Rim ("male donkeys", H5895) — masculine plural, closing the list, paired with 'a.sa.Rah ("ten", H6235) again.

What the text says

The Hebrew presents a chain of noun + number pairs with no verbs and no explicit conjunctions between most items except the vav on u.ve.nei.Hem ("and their young") and va.'.ya.Rim ("and male donkeys"), which link only the last item in certain sub-groups. The camels are described first by the participle mei.ni.Kot ("suckling"), then their young are added via a construct phrase with a pronominal suffix (ve.nei.Hem, "their young"), and only after both are named does the number she.lo.Shim ("thirty") appear — meaning the thirty may cover the camels together with their offspring as one counted set, a structure that differs from lists like "cows forty" or "bulls ten," where the noun is followed directly by its own number.

The remaining pairs — pa.Rot / 'ar.ba.'Im ("cows" / "forty"), fa.Rim / 'a.sa.Rah ("bulls" / "ten"), 'a.to.Not / 'es.Rim ("female donkeys" / "twenty"), and '.ya.Rim / 'a.sa.Rah ("male donkeys" / "ten") — follow a simple noun-then-number pattern, each unit standing independently. The text distinguishes female donkeys ('atonot) from male donkeys ('ayarim) as separate categories with separate counts, a distinction not preserved by every ancient version.

Differences between versions

The Vulgate gives tauros viginti ("bulls, twenty"), whereas the Hebrew has farim ("bulls") followed by 'asarah ("ten") — a numeric divergence from the Masoretic figure. The LXX renders 'atonot / 'ayarim generically as ὄνους ("donkeys") and πώλους ("foals"), without marking the male/female distinction that the Hebrew 'atonot ("female donkeys") and 'ayarim ("male donkeys") make explicit.