Numbers 26:51

Summary

The verse closes the census list of Numbers 26 by giving the total number of enrolled men of Israel: 601,730. It functions as a summary statement, marked by the demonstrative "these," referring back to all the tribal figures enumerated earlier in the chapter.

Key words

• 'Elleh ("these", H0428) — demonstrative particle opening the verse, pointing back to the preceding list of tribal counts and forward to the total that follows.
• pequdei ("[the] enrolled [men] of", H6485A) — qal passive participle, masculine plural construct; identifies the men as those who have been "mustered" or "counted," and the construct form links it directly to "sons of Israel."
• benei ("[the] people of", H1121G) — masculine plural construct of "sons," forming with Yisra'el the standard phrase "sons of Israel," i.e., the Israelite population being counted.
• 'Elef ("thousand", H0505G) — appears twice, once with the conjunction va- ("and") joining it to the six hundred, giving "six hundred thousand and one thousand."
• she.lo.Shim ("thirty", H7970) — masculine plural cardinal number, closing the sum with the final digit unit joined by u- ("and").

What the text says

The Hebrew constructs the total number through a chain of construct and coordinated cardinal numbers rather than a single compound numeral. The sequence is shesh-me'ot 'elef ("six hundred thousand"), then va'alef ("and one thousand") — literally "and a thousand" — added to reach 601,000. This is followed by sheva' me'ot ("seven hundred") and ushloshim ("and thirty"), giving 730. The full number, built additively through juxtaposition and the conjunction va- / u- ("and"), totals 601,730.

The syntax places 'Elleh pequdei benei Yisra'el ("these are the enrolled of the sons of Israel") as a nominal clause functioning as a heading or summary caption, with the participle pequdei in construct governing benei Yisra'el. The numeral chain that follows has no verb; it stands in apposition to this heading, functioning as the numerical predicate of the whole clause. The repeated use of construct forms for the number words (shesh-, sheva') shows that Hebrew treats numbers above ten as construct chains tied to the units they modify (hundreds, thousands), a feature not visible in translations that simply render a single arithmetical figure.

Differences between versions

The LXX (Swete) uses ἐπίσκεψις ("visitation," here rendering "enrollment/census") for pequdei, and expresses the total as "600,000 and 1,000 and 700, thirty," matching the Hebrew's additive structure. The Vulgate renders pequdei with summa...qui recensiti sunt ("the sum of those who were counted"), and gives "sexcenta millia, et mille septingenti triginta," preserving the same total but phrasing it as continuous Latin numerals rather than the Hebrew's segmented construct chain. Modern translations (BSB, SBLIBRE, RV1909) collapse the phrase into a single arithmetic figure, 601,730, obscuring the stepwise construct-numeral syntax visible in the Hebrew.