Numbers 1:22

לִבְנֵי שִׁמְעוֹן תּוֹלְדֹתָם לְמִשְׁפְּחֹתָם לְבֵית אֲבֹתָם פְּקֻדָיו בְּמִסְפַּר שֵׁמוֹת לְגֻלְגְּלֹתָם כָּל־זָכָר מִבֶּן עֶשְׂרִים שָׁנָה וָמַעְלָה כֹּל יֹצֵא צָבָֽא׃

✦ Hebrew interlinear

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✦ The same verse in five languages

Hebrew

לִבְנֵ֣י שִׁמְע֔וֹן תּוֹלְדֹתָ֥ם לְמִשְׁפְּחֹתָ֖ם לְבֵ֣ית אֲבֹתָ֑ם פְּקֻדָ֗יו בְּמִסְפַּ֤ר שֵׁמוֹת֙ לְגֻלְגְּלֹתָ֔ם כָּל־זָכָ֗ר מִבֶּ֨ן עֶשְׂרִ֤ים שָׁנָה֙ וָמַ֔עְלָה כֹּ֖ל יֹצֵ֥א צָבָֽא׃

Greek (Septuagint)

Τοῖς υἱοῖς Συμεὼν κατὰ συγγενίας αὐτῶν, κατὰ δήμους αὐτῶν, κατ’ οἴκους πατριῶν αὐτῶν, κατὰ ἀριθμὸν ὀνομάτων αὐτῶν, κατὰ κεφαλὴν αὐτῶν, πάντα ἀρσενικὰ ἀπὸ εἰκοσαετοῦς καὶ ἐπάνω, πᾶς ὁ ἐκπορευόμενος ἐν τῇ δυνάμει·

Greek text from Swete's edition, CC BY-SA 4.0

Latin (Vulgate)

De filiis Simeon per generationes et familias ac domos cognationum suarum recensiti sunt per nomina et capita singulorum, omne quod sexus est masculini a vigesimo anno et supra, procedentium ad bellum,

Spanish

De los hijos de Simeón, sus generaciones, por sus familias, por las casas de sus padres, los que fueron contados de ella, según el número de los nombres, uno por uno, todo varón de veinte años para arriba, todos los que podían salir a la guerra:

Classic Spanish (Reina-Valera 1909)

De los hijos de Simeón, por sus generaciones, por sus familias, por las casas de sus padres, los contados de ellos conforme á la cuenta de los nombres por sus cabezas, todos los varones de veinte años arriba, todos los que podían salir á la guerra;

English

From the sons of Simeon, according to the records of their clans and families, counting one by one the names of every male twenty years of age or older who could serve in the army,

✦ What the text says

Summary

The verse records the census procedure applied to the descendants of Simeon: they are organized by genealogies, clans and ancestral houses, and the enrolled men are counted by name and by head, listing every male aged twenty years or more who is fit to go out for military service.

Key words

v.Nei ("[the] descendants of", H1121G) — masculine plural construct opening the chain "descendants of Simeon," marking the tribal unit being enumerated.
pe.ku.Da ("enrolled [men]", H6485A) — a Qal passive participle in construct form; it denotes those who have been counted/mustered, syntactically governing the following phrase "by number of names."
gul.ge.lo.Ta ("heads", H1538) — feminine plural construct with possessive suffix "their," used idiomatically for counting individuals "by head," i.e., person by person.
za.Khar ("male", H2145) — adjective modifying kol ("every," H3605), specifying that the census counts only males.
yo.Tze' ("[one who] goes forth", H3318N) — a Qal participle in construct with tza.Va' ("warfare," H6635H), literally "one going out to/of war," describing military eligibility as an ongoing capacity rather than a fixed status.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built as a chain of construct phrases stacked before the main clause appears. It opens with li-v.Nei Shim'on ("of/to the sons of Simeon"), then piles up nested genitive relations: toldotam ("their genealogies"), le-mishpechotam ("to/by their clans"), le-veit avotam ("to/by the house of their fathers"). Each of these nouns is in construct state with a third-person plural suffix ("their"), producing a layered description of social organization — genealogy within clan within ancestral house — before the actual subject of counting, pequday-1 ("its enrolled ones," referring back to Simeon's descendants), is introduced.

The counting method itself is expressed through two further construct phrases: be-mispar shemot ("by the number of names") and le-gulgelotam ("to/by their skulls/heads"), the latter being an idiom for headcount, individual-by-individual enumeration rather than aggregate estimation. The qualifying clause kol zakhar mi-ben esrim shanah wa-ma'lah ("every male from a son of twenty years and upward") uses the idiom ben + number ("son of X years") to express age, a construction common in Biblical Hebrew genealogical and legal texts. The final phrase, kol yotze tzava ("everyone who goes out to war/service"), uses a participle (yotze, "the one going out") rather than a finite verb, framing military fitness as a durative characteristic of the counted men rather than a single completed action.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders tza.Va' ("warfare," H6635H) with δυνάμει ("power/force"), a more abstract term than the Hebrew's specific military-service vocabulary. The Vulgate's procedentium ad bellum ("proceeding to war") mirrors the Hebrew participle more literally than the Greek. The Hebrew le-gulgelotam ("by their heads") is rendered in the LXX as κατὰ κεφαλήν ("according to head"), preserving the idiom, while some translations (e.g., BSB) render it more abstractly as "counting one by one."

This explanation describes the text using linguistic data; it adds no doctrine or confessional interpretation.