Numbers 3:48

Summary

Numbers 3:48 instructs that the money collected (from the previous verses' census reckoning) is to be given to Aaron and his sons. This money represents the redemption price for the firstborn Israelites whose numbers exceed the number of Levites available to substitute for them.

Key words

• na.ta.Tah ("you will give", H5414G) — qal sequential perfect; continues the chain of instructions begun in earlier verses, marking this as the next required action in the sequence.
• Ke.sef ("money", H3701G) — masculine singular noun with definite article, referring back to the specific sum already described in the preceding verses.
• pe.du.Yei ("ransoms of", H6302) — masculine plural noun in construct state; grammatically bound to the following participle, forming a compound phrase rather than standing alone.
• 'o.de.Fim ("the ones exceeding", H5736) — qal participle, masculine plural, with definite article; describes an ongoing state ("those who are in excess") rather than a completed action.
• Hem ("them", H9038) — pronominal suffix attached to the preposition ba ("in/among"), pointing back to a group established in the surrounding narrative context.

What the text says

The verse opens with the narrative vav attached to na.ta.Tah ("and you will give"), a sequential perfect that carries forward the instructional chain from the prior verses — this is not a new command but the next link in an ongoing set of directions. The direct object is ha-Kesef ("the money"), marked definite, meaning the text assumes the reader already knows which money is meant, from the census/valuation described earlier.

The recipients are marked by the preposition le ("to") twice: le-'Aharon ("to Aaron") and u-le-vanav ("and to his sons"), a symmetrical double-recipient phrase.

The final clause is a construct chain: pedujei ha-odefim bahem — literally "ransoms-of the-ones-exceeding among-them." Pedujei is a plural construct noun bound tightly to the participle ha-odefim, so the two words function as a single semantic unit ("the ransoms belonging to those who exceed"). The participle form of odefim (rather than a finite verb) frames "exceeding" as a description of a class of people, not a single completed event. The final prepositional phrase bahem ("among them") lacks an explicit antecedent within this verse alone — the "them" depends on the group identified in the surrounding verses.

Differences between versions

The Vulgate renders the plural construct pedujei ("ransoms of") with a singular pretium ("the price"), collapsing the Hebrew's plural into one abstract sum. The LXX preserves a plural with lytra ("ransoms"), matching the Hebrew's plural more closely. The BSB translation supplies "the Israelites" as the referent of bahem ("among them"), a clarification not present as an explicit noun in this verse's Hebrew, where the antecedent is only recoverable from context.