Numbers 3:39

Summary

Numbers 3:39 gives the total count of the Levites enrolled by Moses and Aaron under divine command, organized by clan, including every male one month old and older: twenty-two thousand.

Key words

• pequdei ("[those] enrolled of", H6485A) — qal passive participle, masculine plural construct; it names the group as "the enrolled ones of" the Levites, not merely "the count," framing the verse around the people themselves rather than an abstract number.
• 'asher ("whom", H0834A) — relative particle introducing the clause that specifies who did the enrolling (Moses and Aaron) and under what authority.
• pi ("mouth of", H6310I) — masculine singular construct in the phrase 'al-pi YHWH, literally "upon the mouth of Yehovah," an idiom expressing that the action was carried out according to a spoken directive.
• mishpechotam ("clans", H4940 + H9028 suffix) — feminine plural construct with third-person plural suffix "their," showing the count was organized by the Levites' own family groupings.
• ben-chodesh ("a son of a month", H1121L + H2320G) — construct idiom meaning "one month old," using "son of" to express age rather than a direct numeral-plus-unit construction.

What the text says

The verse opens with kol-pequdei ha-leviyyim ("all the enrolled of the Levites"), a construct chain that sets up the subject as the total membership counted, not a separate abstract tally. The relative clause 'asher paqad Mosheh ve-Aharon 'al-pi YHWH attributes the enrolling action to Moses and Aaron jointly (both verbs and subjects singular in form, though two names are joined by ve, "and"), and ties the authority for the census to the idiom "mouth of Yehovah" — a Hebrew expression for a command or utterance, rather than a written law or abstract instruction.

The phrase le-mishpechotam ("to their clans") indicates the organizing principle of the count: by family group, not simply as a lump total. The qualification kol-zakhar mi-ben-chodesh va-ma'lah ("every male from a son of a month and upward") uses the idiom "son of a month" for age, marking the youngest eligible age as one month, with the directional he on ma'lah ("-wards") indicating an open-ended upward range. The final numeral shenayim ve-'esrim 'alef ("two and twenty, thousand") gives the total as 22,000, with the ones-digit stated before the tens, a common Hebrew numeral order.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders 'al-pi YHWH ("upon the mouth of Yehovah") as διὰ φωνῆς κυρίου ("through the voice of the Lord"), shifting the Hebrew's "mouth" idiom to "voice." The Vulgate instead uses juxta praeceptum Domini ("according to the precept of the Lord"), an abstract rendering that omits the bodily idiom entirely. For the age formula, the Hebrew idiom mi-ben-chodesh ("from a son of a month") appears in the LXX as ἀπὸ μηνιαίου ("from monthly [one]"), an adjectival form, while the Vulgate gives a mense uno ("from one month"), a direct numeral phrase — both diverging from the Hebrew's "son of" construction for expressing age.