Numbers 31:44

Summary

This clause records a numeral entry within the list of livestock taken as spoil in Numbers 31: "and cattle, six and thirty, a thousand" — that is, 36,000 head of cattle. The verse is a single arithmetic notation, not a full sentence with a verb.

Key words

• vaqar ("cattle", H1241) — a collective singular noun referring to bovine animals as a category, not a plural form of individual animals.
• shishah ("six", H8337) — cardinal number, common gender, forming the units component of the compound numeral.
• sheloshim ("thirty", H7970) — cardinal number, masculine plural in form (as Hebrew tens typically appear), giving the tens component.
• 'elef ("thousand", H0505G) — cardinal number, common gender singular, functioning as the multiplier that scales the preceding sum (six plus thirty) into thousands.

What the text says

The Hebrew constructs the number by joining units and tens with the conjunction u ("and", H9002) twice: first linking vaqar to the numeral phrase, then linking shishah to sheloshim. The resulting sequence — shishah u-sheloshim — literally reads "six and thirty," which in Hebrew numeral syntax means "thirty-six." This entire phrase is then multiplied by 'elef ("thousand"), yielding "thirty-six, of a thousand," i.e., 36,000. There is no verb in this segment; it functions as an appositional or list-style clause continuing an enumeration of plunder items counted earlier in the chapter. The noun vaqar being singular in form despite denoting a large multitude reflects the common Hebrew pattern of using collective nouns for herd animals, so the numeral tells the reader how many head are meant despite the noun's grammatical singularity.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew order "six and thirty" (shishah u-sheloshim) is mirrored by the LXX, which reads ἕξ καὶ τριάκοντα ("six and thirty"), preserving the units-before-tens sequence. The Vulgate reverses this to "triginta sex" ("thirty-six"), placing tens before units, which is the more common Latin numeral order. Modern translations such as the BSB and RV1909 follow the Latin-style tens-then-units convention ("36,000," "treinta y seis mil"), while the underlying Hebrew word order itself places the unit digit first. This is a difference in numeral phrasing convention across languages, not a difference in the quantity recorded.