Numbers 1:33

Summary

Numbers 1:33 reports the census total for the tribe of Ephraim: 40,500 men were registered. The verse consists almost entirely of numerals attached to the construct phrase naming the tribe.

Key words

• pekudei ("enrolled [men]", H6485A) — qal passive participle, masculine plural construct; it means "the enrolled ones of," setting up the link to the tribe name.
• Hem ("their", H9028) — pronominal suffix attached to pekudei, specifying "their enrolled men," referring back to the tribe's descendants mentioned in the census formula.
• matteh ("[the] tribe of", H4294H) — masculine singular construct, joining directly to the proper name that follows.
• 'Efrayim ("Ephraim", H0669G) — proper name, identifying which tribe is being counted.
• 'arba'im ("[were] forty", H0705) — cardinal number, masculine plural, the first component of the total (forty thousand).

What the text says

The verse is built as a construct chain: pekudei-hem le-matteh 'Efrayim — literally "the enrolled-of-them, belonging-to the-tribe-of Ephraim." The participle pekudei (H6485A) is passive, meaning the men are the ones who "were enrolled," not agents performing an action; the suffix Hem (H9028) ties this count back to a collective "them," consistent with the repeated census formula used throughout the chapter for each tribe. The preposition le (H9005) prefixed to matteh (H4294H) marks possession/belonging ("of/for the tribe"), a common construction in the Numbers census lists.

The numeral sequence follows: 'arba'im 'elef (H0705 + H0505G) gives "forty thousand," and va-chamesh me'ot (H9002 + H2568 + H3967) adds "and five hundred," with chamesh in construct form governing the plural me'ot ("hundreds"). The Hebrew states the total as 40,500, built additively from two number units rather than as a single compound numeral.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew text names the tribe as 'Efrayim (H0669G) with a total of 40,500. The LXX text supplied here instead names the tribe as Μανασσὴ ("Manasseh") and gives a different figure, δύο καὶ τριάκοντα χιλιάδες καὶ τριακόσιοι ("thirty-two thousand three hundred"). This indicates the LXX verse cited corresponds to a different tribe's count than the Hebrew verse 1:33, reflecting a difference in verse correspondence between the two textual traditions at this point in the chapter. The Vulgate, by contrast, preserves the same numeral value as the Hebrew — quadraginta millia quingenti ("forty thousand five hundred") — though it omits the tribe's name, which in the Vulgate's sentence flow is understood from the preceding clause.