Numbers 31:4

Summary

The verse instructs that one thousand men be sent from each tribe of Israel, drawn from all the tribes collectively, to go out for war. The Hebrew repeats the numerical formula twice before specifying the totality of the tribes and the verb of sending.

Key words

• 'Elef ("one thousand", H0505G) — a cardinal number, repeated twice (words 1 and 4), producing a distributive sense: "a thousand, a thousand," i.e., one thousand per unit.
• ma.Teh ("tribe", H4294H) — masculine singular noun, appearing after each la ("to the", H9005) preposition, marking the distributive unit ("to the tribe... to the tribe").
• khol ("all", H3605) — masculine singular construct noun, governing ma.Tot to form the construct phrase "all of the tribes of."
• ma.Tot ("[the] tribes of", H4294H) — feminine plural construct form of the same root as ma.Teh, here in construct with Yisra'El, forming "tribes of Israel."
• tishlechu ("you will send out", H7971G) — qal imperfect, second person masculine plural, expressing a command or future obligation directed at the addressees (the ones organizing the levy).

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence begins with a doubled distributive construction: 'Elef la-mmaTeh ("a thousand to the tribe") repeated twice — 'Elef la-mmaTeh, 'Elef la-mmaTeh. This repetition of the same phrase functions grammatically as a distributive idiom, meaning "a thousand per tribe" or "a thousand for each tribe," without needing a separate word for "each." Hebrew narrative and legal style frequently uses this kind of doubling to express distribution across a group.

Following this, the phrase le-khol maTot Yisra'El ("for all the tribes of Israel") specifies the scope: the distributive command applies across the totality of Israel's tribes. Here khol stands in construct with maTot, and maTot in turn stands in construct with Yisra'El, creating a chain of construct relationships: "all of [the] tribes of Israel."

The main verb, tishlechu ("you will send out"), is a qal imperfect second-person masculine plural, placed near the end of the clause. In Hebrew, verbs of command or instruction in the imperfect can carry either a future or an obligatory/imperative nuance depending on context; here it functions as an instruction addressed to the collective "you" (plural) responsible for organizing the tribes. The final phrase la-tzTzava' ("to the war/army", H6635H) states the purpose of the sending.

Differences between versions

The LXX (Swete) renders the doubled Hebrew formula as chilioi ek phylēs, chilioi ek phylēs ("a thousand from a tribe, a thousand from a tribe"), preserving the repetition but using ek ("from") where the Hebrew uses la ("to/for"), shifting the preposition's directional sense from "to the tribe" to "out of the tribe."

The Vulgate (Clementine) does not preserve the doubling at all, instead rendering it as a single statement: Mille viri de singulis tribubus eligantur ("let a thousand men be chosen from each tribe"), adding the verb eligantur ("let them be chosen") not present as a separate lexical item in the Hebrew, where the sending itself (tishlechu) is the only verb.