Numbers 1:31

Summary

The verse reports the census total for the tribe of Zebulun: the men enrolled numbered fifty-seven thousand four hundred. It follows the fixed formula used throughout Numbers 1 to record each tribe's count.

Key words

• pekudei ("enrolled [men]", H6485A) — qal passive participle, masculine plural construct; denotes those who have been counted or mustered, in construct relation to the following pronoun.
• hem ("their", H9028) — pronominal suffix attached to pekudei, specifying "their enrolled [men]," i.e., the men belonging to the tribe named next.
• matteh ("[the] tribe of", H4294H) — masculine singular construct noun, linking to Zevulun to form "tribe of Zebulun."
• shiv'ah ("[were] seven", H7651) — cardinal number, common gender singular, the first element of the compound number fifty-seven (thousand).
• 'arba' ("four", H0702) — cardinal number in construct form, combining with me'ot ("hundreds", H3967) to yield "four hundred."

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built as a construct chain: pekudei-hem ("their enrolled [men]") stands in construct with le-matteh Zevulun ("of/belonging to the tribe of Zebulun"), producing the sense "the enrolled men of them, belonging to the tribe of Zebulun." This is the same formulaic opening used for each tribal count in the chapter, where the participle pekudei functions almost like a technical census term rather than a full verbal clause — there is no finite verb "were" in the Hebrew; it is supplied in translation.

The numeral itself is expressed additively rather than as a single word: shiv'ah ("seven") plus va-chamishim ("and fifty") gives "fifty-seven," which is then multiplied by 'elef ("thousand", H0505G) to form "fifty-seven thousand." This is joined by ve- ("and") to 'arba' me'ot, literally "four of hundreds," i.e., "four hundred." The total, fifty-seven thousand four hundred, is thus built from four separate numeral words rather than one composite number, a pattern typical of Biblical Hebrew numeral syntax.

Differences between versions

The Vulgate (VULCLEM) gives only the number, "quinquaginta septem millia quadringenti" ("fifty-seven thousand four hundred"), without repeating the tribe name, since it depends on the preceding verse for context. The Septuagint text supplied (LXXSWETE) names the tribe as Ephroim (Ephraim) rather than Zebulun and gives a different total, "forty thousand and five hundred," diverging both in tribal identification and in numeral value from the Hebrew text presented here.