Numbers 10:19

Summary

The verse identifies the leader placed in charge of the military contingent of the tribe of Simeon during the wilderness march: Shelumiel, son of Zurishaddai. The Hebrew sentence has no explicit verb "to be"; the leadership role is expressed purely through the preposition "over."

Key words

• tzeva ("military group of", H6635A) — construct-state noun, the first link in a four-word construct chain designating the fighting force under command.
• matteh ("tribe of", H4294H) — construct-state noun, second link, specifying whose army is meant.
• benei ("descendants of", H1121G) — construct-state plural noun, third link, connecting the tribe to its eponymous ancestor Simeon.
• ben ("son of", H1121A) — construct-state noun introducing the patronymic that identifies Shelumiel by his father.
• Shelumiel (H8017) — proper name, the subject of the implicit predication "[was] over."

What the text says

The clause opens with the conjunction ve ("and", H9002) followed by the preposition 'al ("[was] over", H5921A), which governs a long construct chain: tzeva — matteh — benei — Shimon. Each noun in this chain stands in construct form, meaning it cannot take its own article or independent meaning but instead points forward to the next word, producing the sense "the army of the tribe of the sons of Simeon." This chain functions as the object of the preposition "over," establishing what is being commanded, before the subject who commands it is named.

Only after the full chain is stated does the text give the name of the person placed "over" it: Shelumiel, followed by ben ("son of", H1121A) plus the compound patronymic Tzuri-shaddai (H6701, appearing as two written elements Tzuri and Shaddai in the transliteration but functioning as one personal name). The Hebrew sentence has no finite verb such as "was" or "stood"; the predication of leadership is carried entirely by the preposition 'al placed before the object, a common construction in Biblical Hebrew for administrative or military lists. This means the grammatical weight of "being in charge" rests on positional syntax rather than on a verb of being.

Differences between versions

The Vulgate makes the implicit predicate explicit by inserting princeps fuit ("was chief"), supplying a verb that the Hebrew leaves unstated. The Septuagint and Vulgate both render the two-element name Tzuri + Shaddai as a single fused word (Σουρισαδαί / Surisaddai), matching how the Hebrew construct phrase functions as one personal name even though it is composed of two elements. Modern translations such as BSB reorder the clause, placing the subject "Shelumiel" first, which reflects target-language word order rather than the Hebrew's object-first, preposition-led sequence.