Numbers 3:40

Summary

Yehovah instructs Moses to count every firstborn male among the Israelites who is one month old or older, and to record the number by their names. The verse contains two parallel imperative commands: one to enroll/count, another to take a census of names.

Key words

• pe.Kod ("enroll", H6485A) — qal imperative masculine singular; the initial command verb, addressed directly to Moses ("you").
• be.Khor ("firstborn", H1060) — masculine singular noun, defining the class of people to be counted, further specified by za.Khar ("male", H2145).
• ben- ("a son of", H1121L) — construct form used idiomatically with Cho.desh ("a month", H2320G) to express age: "a son of a month" = one month old.
• Ma.'e.la ("up", H4605) with the directional he (H9011) — marks the open-ended upper boundary, "and upward," extending the age range without a stated maximum.
• Sa' ("take", H5375V) — second qal imperative, parallel to pe.Kod, introducing the action of recording the mis.Par ("number of", H4557) she.mo.Ta-m ("their names", H8034 + H9028).

What the text says

The verse opens with the narrative formula va-i.Yo.mer Yehovah 'el-mo.Sheh ("and Yehovah said to Moses"), a standard speech-introduction pattern in the book. The divine command itself consists of two imperatives in sequence: pe.Kod ("enroll") and ve-Sa' ("and take"). The first imperative governs the object kol-be.Khor za.Khar li-v.Nei Yis.ra.'El — "every firstborn male belonging to the sons of Israel" — using construct chains (kol-, li-) to link the categories precisely: all, firstborn, male, of the sons of Israel.

The age qualification mi-ben-Cho.desh va-Ma.'e.la ("from a son of a month and upward") uses the Hebrew idiom "son of X" to express age in temporal units, here months, followed by the directional suffix on Ma.'e.la that grammatically signals an unbounded upward extension — there is no stated upper age limit in the Hebrew construction itself.

The second imperative, ve-Sa' 'et mis.Par she.mo.Ta-m ("and take the number of their names"), introduces the object marker 'et (H0853, untranslated) before the construct chain mis.Par she.mo.Ta-m, literally "the number of their names" — the counting is explicitly tied to the recording of names, not merely a numerical tally.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the two Hebrew imperatives (pe.Kod, ve-Sa') as Ἐπίσκεψαι ("visit/review") and λάβετε ("take," plural imperative), shifting the second verb from singular to plural address. The Vulgate condenses the second command into habebis ("you will have"), a future indicative rather than an imperative, altering the grammatical mood found in the Hebrew Sa'. The Hebrew mis.Par she.mo.Ta-m ("the number of their names") appears in the LXX as τὸν ἀριθμὸν ἐξ ὀνόματος ("the number by name") and in the Vulgate simply as summam eorum ("their sum"), the latter omitting explicit reference to "names" (she.mo.Ta-m, H8034) present in the Hebrew.