Numbers 1:23

Summary

Numbers 1:23 gives the total number of registered men from the tribe of Simeon in the wilderness census: fifty-nine thousand three hundred. The verse is a short formulaic report consisting of the tribe's name followed by a compound numeral.

Key words

• pequdei ("enrolled/counted [men] of", H6485A) — Qal passive participle, masculine plural construct; it links back to the census formula used for each tribe, meaning "the counted-ones of."
• maṭṭeh ("tribe of", H4294H) — masculine singular construct noun, forming the phrase "tribe of Simeon."
• tish'ah ("nine", H8672) — cardinal number, common gender singular, the units digit of the total.
• chamishim ("fifty", H2572) — cardinal number, masculine plural, combined with tish'ah via the conjunction va ("and", H9002) to form "fifty-nine."
• shelosh me'ot ("three hundred", H7969 + H3967) — construct cardinal shelosh ("three of") governing the feminine plural me'ot ("hundreds"), yielding "three hundred."

What the text says

The verse opens with pequdei-hem ("their enrolled/counted [men]", H6485A + H9028), a construct passive participle with a third-person plural pronominal suffix, which ties this tribe's count to the same enumeration formula repeated throughout the census list. This is followed by le-maṭṭeh Shim'on ("of the tribe of Simeon", H9005 + H4294H + H8095G), a prepositional phrase identifying the tribe.

The numeral itself is built additively: tish'ah ("nine", H8672) plus va-chamishim ("and fifty", H9002 + H2572) gives fifty-nine, followed by 'elef ("thousand", H0505G). Then u-shelosh me'ot ("and three hundred", H9002 + H7969 + H3967) adds the hundreds. The Hebrew literally states the units before the tens ("nine and fifty"), a common numeral order in Biblical Hebrew, producing the sum 59,300. The construct chain shelosh me'ot ("three of hundreds") shows the cardinal shelosh governing the plural noun me'ot, a standard Hebrew way of forming multiples of "hundred."

Differences between versions

The Hebrew numeral order places the unit before the ten (tish'ah va-chamishim, "nine and fifty"), which the LXX reproduces in the same order (ἐννέα καὶ πεντήκοντα, "nine and fifty"). The Vulgate and modern translations (BSB, RV1909, SBLIBRE) instead present the numeral in the more natural target-language order, "fifty-nine," reversing the sequence found in the Hebrew and Greek. All versions agree on the total value, 59,300; the divergence is only in the internal ordering of the tens and units within the numeral phrase, not in the quantity itself.