Numbers 26:37

Summary

This verse closes the census list for the tribe of Ephraim, giving the total count of registered men by clan, and identifies these clans as descendants of Joseph. The total given is thirty-two thousand five hundred.

Key words

• mishpechot ("clans of", H4940) — feminine plural construct noun, used twice (opening and closing the verse) to frame the whole unit as a report about clan groupings.
• bene ("descendants of", H1121G) — masculine plural construct of "sons," linking Ephraim to Joseph as the ancestral head of the tribe.
• fequdeihem ("their enrolled [men]", H6485A + H9028) — qal passive participle with 3rd person plural suffix, meaning "the ones counted belonging to them"; this is the technical census term for those officially registered.
• shenayim ushloshim elef vachamesh me'ot ("two and thirty thousand and five hundred") — a sequence of cardinal numbers (H8147, H7970, H0505G, H2568, H3967) built by simple conjunction (u-, "and"), giving the total 32,500.
• 'Eleh ("these", H0428) — demonstrative particle used twice, opening and closing the verse as a resumptive frame ("these are... these are...").

What the text says

The verse is built as a closed frame using the demonstrative 'Eleh ("these") at both the start and the end. The first 'Eleh introduces "the clans of the descendants of Ephraim" (mishpechot bene 'Efrayim) and attaches the census term liphqudeihem ("to their enrolled [men]"), which functions adverbially to specify that the following number refers to those officially counted. The number itself is constructed additively: "two and thirty, a thousand, and five, hundreds" — a common Biblical Hebrew pattern where units, tens, and hundreds are joined by the conjunction va- ("and") rather than expressed as a single compound numeral, yielding 32,500.

The second half repeats 'Eleh to re-anchor the statement: "these are the descendants of Joseph" (bene Yosef), followed by le-mishpechotam ("according to their clans," H4940 + H9028), a prepositional phrase indicating that the preceding total is organized by clan divisions. The repetition of mishpechot and bene creates a chiastic-like envelope: clan → Ephraim → count, then count implied → Joseph → clan, tying the numerical report back to genealogical identity.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew, Vulgate, and modern translations align closely: the Vulgate's "triginta duo millia quingenti" and the Spanish/English renderings ("32,500") match the Hebrew arithmetic. The Septuagint text supplied for this reference, however, contains material about Salpaad (Zelophehad) and his daughters' names — content that in the Hebrew numbering system belongs to a different part of Numbers 26, not to the Ephraim census total described here. The data given thus shows the LXX passage as textually unrelated in content to the Hebrew verse under this same reference.