Numbers 3:22

Summary

This verse gives the total census count of the Gershonite Levites, counting all males from one month old and upward. The total recorded is seven thousand five hundred.

Key words

• pekudei ("enrolled [men]", H6485A) — a qal passive participle, masculine plural construct, meaning "the ones counted/enrolled of." It appears twice (positions 1 and 13), forming a repetitive frame around the specification of who was counted and the final number.
• mispar ("number of", H4557) — masculine singular construct noun, introducing the standard by which counting occurs: "according to the number of."
• zakhar ("male", H2145) — masculine singular adjective, specifying the sex of those counted, modified by kol ("every", H3605) in construct.
• ben-chodesh ("a son of a month", H1121L + H2320G) — construct phrase literally "son of a month," idiomatically meaning "one month old," setting the minimum age threshold.
• va'ela h ("and upward", H4605 + directional he H9011) — the directional he suffix gives the sense of "upward/onward," indicating no upper age limit.

What the text says

The verse is built around two occurrences of the participle pekudei ("enrolled [men]", H6485A), both in construct with the pronominal suffix hem ("their", H9028), producing "their enrolled [men]" or "the ones counted belonging to them." The first occurrence introduces the criterion of counting: be-mispar kol-zakhar ("by the number of every male," H9003+H4557+H3605+H2145), specifying that all males are included regardless of other status. The phrase mi-ben-chodesh va-ma'elah ("from a son of a month and upward," H9006+H1121L+H2320G+H9002+H4605+H9011) sets the lower age boundary using the idiom "son of a month" for "one month old," with the directional he on ma'elah conveying continuation without a stated upper limit.

The second occurrence of pekudei hem resumes the subject after the qualifying clause, functioning almost as a resumptive repetition before the numeral is given: shiv'at 'alafim wa-chamesh me'ot ("seven thousand and five hundred," H7651+H0505G+H9002+H2568+H3967). The construct chain shiv'at 'alafim ("seven of thousands") uses the numeral in construct form typical of Biblical Hebrew numeral syntax, followed by the additive wa-chamesh me'ot ("and five hundred").

Differences between versions

The Vulgate renders pekudei hem not as a repeated participial construction but as numeratus est populus ("the population was numbered"), collapsing the twofold Hebrew repetition into a single finite verb clause. The LXX similarly reduces the repeated pekudei hem to a single noun, ἐπίσκεψις ("the census/review"), appearing once at the start and once before the number, mirroring the Hebrew structure more closely than the Vulgate but using a noun rather than a participle.