Numbers 10:27

Summary

The verse identifies the leader placed over the military division of the tribe of Naphtali during the march order described in Numbers 10. The commander named is Ahira, son of Enan.

Key words

• tze.Va' ("[the] military group of", H6635A) — masculine singular construct noun, forming a chain with the following word to specify "the army/division of the tribe."
• ma.Teh ("[the] tribe of", H4294H) — masculine singular construct noun, linking "army" to the tribal identity, continuing the construct chain.
• be.Nei ("[the] descendants of", H1121G) — masculine plural construct of ben ("son"), here meaning "sons of" in the sense of tribal lineage, completing the chain "army of the tribe of the sons of Naphtali."
• naf.ta.Li ("Naphtali", H5321G) — proper name, the tribal ancestor whose descendants form this division.
• ben ("[the] son of", H1121A) — masculine singular construct, used here in the ordinary genealogical sense to link Ahira to his father Enan.

What the text says

The verse opens with the conjunction ve ("and", H9002) attached to the preposition 'Al- ("[was] over", H5921A), which governs the entire following construct chain: tze.Va' ma.Teh be.Nei naf.ta.Li — literally "the army of the tribe of the sons of Naphtali." This is a four-term construct chain, a common feature of Biblical Hebrew where multiple nouns are strung together in genitive relationships without possessive particles; each noun in construct form (tze.Va', ma.Teh, be.Nei) depends on the next, producing a cascading specification that narrows from "army" down to the specific tribal genealogy of Naphtali.

The subject of the sentence, syntactically delayed until after this long construct chain, is the personal name 'a.chi.Ra' ("Ahira", H0299), followed by his patronym marked with ben ("[the] son of", H1121A) plus 'ei.Nan ("Enan", H5881). The Hebrew sentence structure places the prepositional phrase describing the office ("over the army of...") before the name of the office-holder, a common pattern in these Numbers 10 lists where position/role precedes the personal identification, differing from the more subject-first structures found in some target languages.

Differences between versions

The Vulgate (VULCLEM) adds the word princeps ("chief/prince"), an explanatory noun not present in the Hebrew construct chain, where the Hebrew simply uses the preposition 'Al- ("over") to indicate the leadership role without a specific noun for "chief." The LXX (LXXSWETE) renders the construct chain with genitive forms (τῆς δυνάμεως φυλῆς υἱῶν Νεφθαλεὶ), mirroring the Hebrew construct structure through Greek genitives rather than adding a title-word.