Numbers 1:30
לִבְנֵי זְבוּלֻן תּוֹלְדֹתָם לְמִשְׁפְּחֹתָם לְבֵית אֲבֹתָם בְּמִסְפַּר שֵׁמֹת מִבֶּן עֶשְׂרִים שָׁנָה וָמַעְלָה כֹּל יֹצֵא צָבָֽא׃
✦ Hebrew interlinear
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✦ The same verse in five languages
לִבְנֵ֣י זְבוּלֻ֔ן תּוֹלְדֹתָ֥ם לְמִשְׁפְּחֹתָ֖ם לְבֵ֣ית אֲבֹתָ֑ם בְּמִסְפַּ֣ר שֵׁמֹ֗ת מִבֶּ֨ן עֶשְׂרִ֤ים שָׁנָה֙ וָמַ֔עְלָה כֹּ֖ל יֹצֵ֥א צָבָֽא׃
Τοῖς υἱοῖς Ἰωσὴφ υἱοῖς Ἐφράιμ 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 Zabulon per generationes et familias ac domos cognationum suarum recensiti sunt per nomina singulorum a vigesimo anno et supra, omnes qui poterant ad bella procedere,
De los hijos de Zabulón, sus generaciones, por sus familias, por las casas de sus padres, según el número de los nombres, de veinte años para arriba, todos los que podían salir a la guerra:
Classic Spanish (Reina-Valera 1909)
De los hijos de Zabulón, por sus generaciones, por sus familias, por las casas de sus padres, conforme á la cuenta de sus nombres, de veinte años arriba, todos los que podían salir á la guerra;
From the sons of Zebulun, according to the records of their clans and families, counting the names of all those twenty years of age or older who could serve in the army,
✦ What the text says
Summary
Numbers 1:30 records the census procedure applied to the descendants of Zebulun: they are counted by genealogical line, clan, and ancestral house, listing names of every male twenty years old or more who is fit to go out for military service.
Key words
- tol.do.Ta[m] ("their genealogies", H8435) — feminine plural construct with pronominal suffix, marking descent lines as the first organizing category of the count.
- mish.pe.cho.Ta[m] ("their clans", H4940) — feminine plural construct with suffix, the second nested subdivision after genealogies.
- Veit 'a.vo.Ta[m] ("the house of their ancestors", H1004M + H0001G) — construct chain combining "house" (masc. sing.) with "ancestors" (fem. plural), the smallest social unit named in the sequence.
- Ben ("a son of", H1121L) — masculine singular construct used idiomatically with a number of years to express age, here beginning the phrase "a son of twenty years."
- yo.Tze' tza.Va' ("[one who] goes forth" + "warfare", H3318N + H6635H) — qal participle in construct with a noun, forming the technical expression for someone eligible for military service.
What the text says
The verse is built almost entirely on construct chains stacked one inside another: tol.do.Ta[m], mish.pe.cho.Ta[m], and Veit 'a.vo.Ta[m] each govern the following element, producing a nested administrative structure — genealogy contains clan, clan contains ancestral house. The repeated preposition le ("to/for", H9005) before each of these terms marks the distributive sense "according to," so the census is organized layer by layer rather than as a single flat list.
The age formula mi.Ben 'es.Rim sha.Nah va.Ma'.lah ("from a son of twenty years and upward") uses the construct noun Ben ("son of") idiomatically to express age, a common Biblical Hebrew pattern where age is phrased as being "a son of" a certain number of years. The clause closes with kol yo.Tze' tza.Va' ("every one who goes out to/of warfare"), where the participle yo.Tze' is itself in construct with tza.Va', tightly binding "the goer-out" to "warfare" as a single functional category — those who go forth for that purpose — rather than a general activity of departing.
Differences between versions
The Vulgate (VULCLEM) renders the participial construction as "omnes qui poterant ad bella procedere" ("all who were able to go forth to wars"), making explicit an ability/capacity sense not morphologically marked in the Hebrew participle yo.Tze', which simply states "one who goes forth." The LXX text supplied here names "sons of Joseph, sons of Ephraim" instead of Zebulun, diverging from the Hebrew subject of the verse (ve.Nei Zevulun, "sons of Zebulun"); the remaining vocabulary (γενεαί, δῆμοι, οἶκοι πατριῶν, ἀριθμὸς ὀνομάτων) otherwise parallels the layered Hebrew terms for genealogy, clan, and ancestral house.
This explanation describes the text using linguistic data; it adds no doctrine or confessional interpretation.