Numbers 31:34

Summary

This verse records a numerical tally within the list of spoils from the Midianite campaign in Numbers 31: the number of donkeys taken, expressed in Hebrew as "one and sixty thousand," i.e., sixty-one thousand.

Key words

• chamorim ("donkeys", H2543) — common gender plural noun, the counted item.
• 'echad ("one", H0259) — cardinal number, feminine singular; in Hebrew numeral syntax the smaller unit (ones) precedes the larger unit (thousands).
• shishim ("sixty", H8346) — cardinal number, masculine plural; the tens component of the compound number.
• 'elef ("thousand", H0505G) — cardinal number, common gender singular; the multiplier that scales the preceding tens and ones.

What the text says

The Hebrew clause is built entirely from numerals plus the noun chamorim ("donkeys", H2543), with no verb — it functions as a continuation of a list rather than a full sentence. The numeral construction follows a pattern common in Biblical Hebrew: the unit 'echad ("one", H0259) is stated first, joined by the conjunction va ("and", H9002) to shishim ("sixty", H8346), and this combined value is then multiplied by 'elef ("thousand", H0505G). Read together, "one and sixty, thousand" yields the total sixty-one thousand. This ones-before-tens ordering is a structural feature of Hebrew numeral phrases and does not indicate any separate quantity of "one" donkey plus "sixty thousand" donkeys — the whole phrase names a single total.

The verse contains no verbal action; it is a bare enumeration, consistent with its place in a longer list of captured livestock and goods following the military campaign narrated earlier in the chapter.

Differences between versions

The LXX (SWETE) mirrors the Hebrew numeral order closely: μία καὶ ἑξήκοντα χιλιάδες ("one and sixty thousand"), preserving the same ones-then-tens-then-thousand structure.

The Vulgate (Clementine) phrases the same total differently: sexaginta millia et mille ("sixty thousand and one thousand"), splitting the number into two thousand-units (60,000 + 1,000) rather than following the Hebrew's "unit + ten, multiplied by thousand" pattern. Both arrive at the same numeric total of sixty-one thousand, but the internal arithmetic phrasing differs from the Hebrew source text.