Numbers 26:5

Summary

The verse opens the genealogical census of the tribe of Reuben by identifying him as the firstborn of Israel, then lists his descendants by clan name: the line of Hanoch (with its clan, "the Hanochite") and the line of Pallu (with its clan, "the Palluite").

Key words

• bekhor ("firstborn of", H1060) — masculine singular construct noun, linking Reuben directly to Israel as the head noun of a genitive chain ("firstborn of Israel").
• benei ("descendants/sons of", H1121G) — masculine plural construct, introduces the list of Reuben's lineage that follows.
• mishpachat ("clan of", H4940) — feminine singular construct, appears twice, each time governing a gentilic noun marked with the definite article.
• ha-chanokhi ("the Hanochite", H2599) — gentilic form with article, denotes the clan-group descended from Hanoch rather than the individual.
• le-Pallu ("of/to Pallu", H6396 with H9005) — the name Pallu is here marked with the preposition le, unlike Hanoch which stands unmarked in the text.

What the text says

The verse begins with a construct chain, Re'uven bekhor Yisra'el ("Reuben, firstborn of Israel"), which is a nominal clause without a verb — a common feature of genealogical headers in Biblical Hebrew. This establishes Reuben's position before the list of his descendants (benei Re'uven) begins.

The list itself pairs each ancestor's name with a clan designation formed from a gentilic noun bearing the definite article: mishpachat ha-chanokhi ("the clan of the Hanochite") and mishpachat ha-palu'i ("the clan of the Palluite"). The construct noun mishpachat ties the clan to its gentilic form rather than directly to the personal name, so structurally the clan is defined by "the Hanochite-type" or "the Palluite-type," which functions as a collective designation for all descendants of that ancestor.

A notable grammatical irregularity is that the first ancestor's name, Chanokh ("Hanoch", H2585J), appears with no preposition, standing in bare apposition before its clan formula, while the second ancestor's name, Pallu ("Pallu", H6396), is introduced by the preposition le ("to/of"). Both constructions serve the same function — introducing the ancestor whose clan follows — but the Hebrew text does not use a uniform syntactic pattern across the list.

Differences between versions

The Vulgate renders the unmarked Chanokh explicitly as "hujus filius, Henoch" ("his son, Henoch"), supplying a relational noun ("son") that is not present in the Hebrew text at that point, where the sentence relies on apposition alone. The Septuagint follows the Hebrew's asymmetry loosely, using καὶ ("and") before Henoch's clan and τῷ (dative) before Phallu, roughly paralleling the Hebrew's shift from bare apposition to a prepositional form.