Numbers 26:63

Summary

The verse closes the census list of Numbers 26 by identifying who performed the enrollment: Moses and Eleazar the priest. It specifies that this count of the people of Israel took place in the plains of Moab, by the Jordan opposite Jericho.

Key words

• pekudei ("[the] enrolled [men] of", H6485A) — Qal passive participle, masculine plural construct; it names the group that was counted, linking grammatically to the names that follow ("of Moses and Eleazar").
• paqedu ("they enrolled", H6485A) — Qal perfect, third person plural; the same root as pekudei appears again as a finite verb, describing the completed act of counting performed by Moses and Eleazar.
• asher ("who", H0834A) — relative particle introducing the clause that explains the action behind the participle pekudei: "who enrolled the people of Israel."
• bnei Yisra'el ("[the] people of Israel", H1121G + H3478) — construct noun phrase marked by the direct object marker et (H0853), identifying who was counted.
• arvot Mo'av ("[the] plains of Moab", H6160I + H4124I) — construct noun phrase giving the geographic location of the census, further specified by al Yarden Yerecho ("at the Jordan of Jericho").

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence opens with the demonstrative elleh ("these", H0428), pointing back to the census figures just listed in the chapter, and then names those responsible using the construct participle pekudei ("enrolled of") followed by Mosheh ("Moses", H4872) and Elazar hakohen ("Eleazar the priest", H0499G + H3548). The construct form pekudei functions almost like a title: "the enrolled-of-Moses-and-Eleazar," meaning the list produced under their supervision.

The relative clause introduced by asher ("who", H0834A) then supplies a finite verb, paqedu ("they enrolled", H6485A), Qal perfect third person plural, restating the same root in verbal form to describe the completed action: Moses and Eleazar counted the people. The direct object marker et (H0853) precedes bnei Yisra'el ("the people of Israel", H1121G + H3478), marking it as the object of the counting. The final phrase locates the event spatially through a chain of construct and prepositional phrases: be'arvot Mo'av ("in the plains of Moab", H6160I + H4124I), al Yarden ("at the Jordan", H5921A + H3383), Yerecho ("of Jericho", H3405G) — a geographic description proceeding from region to river to landmark city.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders pekudei with the noun epískepsis ("visitation/review") rather than a participle construction, framing the verse as "this is the review of Moses and Eleazar" rather than "these are the enrolled of Moses and Eleazar." The Vulgate similarly shifts to a noun, numerus ("the number"), stating "this is the number of the sons of Israel who were registered by Moses and Eleazar," restructuring the Hebrew's participle-plus-relative-clause syntax into a single descriptive statement about a total count.