Numbers 1:40

לִבְנֵי אָשֵׁר 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

Hebrew

לִבְנֵ֣י אָשֵׁ֔ר תּוֹלְדֹתָ֥ם לְמִשְׁפְּחֹתָ֖ם לְבֵ֣ית אֲבֹתָ֑ם בְּמִסְפַּ֣ר שֵׁמֹ֗ת מִבֶּ֨ן עֶשְׂרִ֤ים שָׁנָה֙ וָמַ֔עְלָה כֹּ֖ל יֹצֵ֥א צָבָֽא׃

Greek (Septuagint)

Τοῖς υἱοῖς Ἀσὴρ κατὰ αυγγενίας αὐτῶν, κατὰ δήμους αὐτῶν, κατ’ οἴκους αὐτῶν, κατὰ ἀριθμὸν ὀνομάτων αὐτῶν, κατὰ κεφαλὴν αὐτῶν, 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 Aser per generationes et familias ac domos cognationum suarum recensiti sunt per nomina singulorum a vigesimo anno et supra, omnes qui poterant ad bella procedere,

Spanish

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

English

From the sons of Asher, 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

The verse records the census framework applied to the tribe of Asher: their descendants are counted according to genealogical lines, clans, and ancestral houses, by name, restricted to males twenty years old and above who are fit for military service.

Key words

v.Nei ("[the] descendants of", H1121G) — masculine plural construct, linking directly to 'a.Sher ("Asher", H0836); establishes the tribal group under enumeration.
tol.do.Ta[m] ("their genealogies", H8435) — feminine plural construct with 3rd person masculine plural suffix, indicating the genealogical descent lines belonging to Asher's sons.
mish.pe.cho.Ta[m] ("their clans", H4940) — feminine plural construct with suffix, a subordinate organizational unit beneath genealogy in the census structure.
yo.Tze' ("[one who] goes forth", H3318N) — Qal participle, masculine singular construct; describes an ongoing characteristic ("the one who goes out") rather than a single completed action, qualifying every eligible male as habitually fit for that activity.
tza.Va' ("warfare", H6635H) — masculine singular noun, the object of the participial phrase, specifying the domain into which the qualified men "go forth."

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built almost entirely of construct chains (smikhut), a grammatical pattern where nouns stack in a "X of Y" relationship without a separate verb of possession. The verse layers four such chains: descendants of Asher, genealogies of their clans, clans of their ancestral houses, and the number of names — each preposition (li, le, be, mi) marking a shift in the organizing category (from tribe, to lineage, to clan, to household, to a numerical count of names). This stacking mirrors an administrative hierarchy: broader kinship categories narrow down to a countable list of individual names.

The qualifying phrase mi.Ben 'es.Rim sha.Nah va.Ma'lah ("from a son of twenty years and upward") uses Ben ("son of", H1121L) idiomatically to denote age, a common Biblical Hebrew construction where age is expressed as being "a son of" a certain number of years. The directional suffix on Ma'lah ("-wards", H9011) reinforces the sense of an open-ended upward range, "twenty years and beyond," without an upper limit stated in the text.

The final clause, kol yo.Tze' tza.Va' ("every one who goes forth to warfare"), uses the participle yo.Tze' to characterize the counted men not by a single past action but by an ongoing eligibility or capacity — those who, as a category, go out to tza.Va' ("warfare/army", H6635H).

Differences between versions

The LXX renders tza.Va' ("warfare", H6635H) with δυνάμει ("power/force"), and adds ἀρσενικὰ ("males") and κατὰ κεφαλὴν ("by head[count]") not present as separate lexical items in the Hebrew construct chain, making explicit what the Hebrew leaves implicit through context. The Vulgate's recensiti sunt ("were counted/registered") supplies a finite verb of enumeration that the Hebrew construct chain does not contain, since the Hebrew clause has no verb here and relies on the construct-noun structure alone to convey the census listing.

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