Numbers 1:52
וְחָנוּ בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל אִישׁ עַֽל־מַחֲנֵהוּ וְאִישׁ עַל־דִּגְלוֹ לְצִבְאֹתָֽם׃
✦ Hebrew interlinear
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✦ The same verse in five languages
וְחָנ֖וּ בְּנֵ֣י יִשְׂרָאֵ֑ל אִ֧ישׁ עַֽל־מַחֲנֵ֛הוּ וְאִ֥ישׁ עַל־דִּגְל֖וֹ לְצִבְאֹתָֽם׃
καὶ παρεμβαλοῦσιν οἱ υἱοὶ Ἰσραήλ, ἀνὴρ ἐν τῇ ἑαυτοῦ τάξει καὶ ἀνὴρ κατὰ τὴν ἑαυτοῦ ἡγεμονίαν, σὺν δυνάμει αὐτῶν·
Greek text from Swete's edition, CC BY-SA 4.0
Latin (Vulgate)
Metabuntur autem castra filii Israël unusquisque per turmas et cuneos atque exercitum suum.
Los hijos de Israel acamparán, cada uno en su campamento, y cada uno junto a su bandera, según sus divisiones.
Classic Spanish (Reina-Valera 1909)
Y los hijos de Israel asentarán sus tiendas cada uno en su escuadrón, y cada uno junto á su bandera, por sus cuadrillas;
The Israelites are to camp by their divisions, each man in his own camp and under his own standard.
✦ What the text says
Summary
The verse describes how the Israelites are to encamp: each man positioned at his own camp and at his own standard, organized according to their military divisions. The sentence establishes a distributive pattern of arrangement across the whole people.
Key words
- chaNu ("they will encamp", H2583) — qal sequential perfect, continuing the narrative sequence begun in the preceding verses; expresses an action that follows logically/temporally from what precedes.
- 'ish ("everyone", H0376I) — masculine singular noun used distributively (appears twice, in items 5 and 10), meaning "each man," marking individual placement within the collective action.
- machaNehu ("his camp", H4264 + H9023) — feminine singular noun in construct form with a possessive suffix "his," indicating each man's designated encampment location.
- digLo ("his standard", H1714 + H9023) — masculine singular noun in construct form with the suffix "his," referring to a banner or ensign under which each man is grouped.
- tziv'oTam ("their military groups", H6635A + H9028) — feminine plural noun in construct form with plural suffix "their," indicating the larger divisions to which the standards belong.
What the text says
The Hebrew sentence opens with the narrative vav ve (H9001) attached to chaNu, marking this as a continuation of prior instructions rather than a new independent statement. The subject bene Yisra'El ("people of Israel", H1121G + H3478) follows the verb, a common verb-subject order in Biblical Hebrew narrative and legal prose.
The distributive structure is built through repetition: 'ish ("everyone", H0376I) appears twice, each time paired with the preposition 'al ("at", H5921A) followed by a construct noun bearing a third-person singular suffix — first machaNehu ("his camp") and then digLo ("his standard"). This grammatical parallelism creates two layers of individual placement: relative to the camp and relative to the standard. The final phrase le-tziv'oTam ("to their military groups", H9005 + H6635A) uses a plural suffix, shifting from the individual ("his") to the collective ("their"), indicating that the individual and standard-based placements are ultimately organized under the larger military divisions.
The construct chains (machaNehu, digLo, tziv'oTam) each link a noun to a possessive suffix, a common Hebrew method for expressing possession without a separate genitive marker.
Differences between versions
The LXX renders machaNehu ("his camp") as tázei ("order/rank"), and digLo ("his standard") as hēgemonían ("leadership/command"), shifting the concrete images of physical camp-location and banner toward more abstract military organizational terms. The Vulgate similarly interprets the structure through turmas et cuneos atque exercitum ("squadrons and companies and army"), expanding the two Hebrew terms into a threefold military description not directly present in the Hebrew's two-part 'ish...'al construction.
This explanation describes the text using linguistic data; it adds no doctrine or confessional interpretation.