Numbers 32:37

וּבְנֵי רְאוּבֵן בָּנוּ אֶת־חֶשְׁבּוֹן וְאֶת־אֶלְעָלֵא וְאֵת קִרְיָתָֽיִם׃

✦ Hebrew interlinear

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✦ The same verse in five languages

Hebrew

וּבְנֵ֤י רְאוּבֵן֙ בָּנ֔וּ אֶת־חֶשְׁבּ֖וֹן וְאֶת־אֶלְעָלֵ֑א וְאֵ֖ת קִרְיָתָֽיִם׃

Greek (Septuagint)

καὶ οἱ υἱοὶ Ῥουβὴν οἰκοδόμησαν τὴν Ἑσεβὼν καὶ Λεαλὴμ καὶ Καριαιθάμ,

Greek text from Swete's edition, CC BY-SA 4.0

Latin (Vulgate)

Filii vero Ruben ædificaverunt Hesebon, et Eleale, et Cariathaim,

Spanish

Los de la tribu de Rubén reconstruyeron las ciudades de Hesbón, Eleale, Quiriatáim,

Classic Spanish (Reina-Valera 1909)

Y los hijos de Rubén edificaron á Hesbón, y á Eleale, y á Kiriathaim,

English

The Reubenites built up Heshbon, Elealeh, Kiriathaim,

✦ What the text says

Summary

The verse states that the descendants of Reuben built three towns: Heshbon, Elealeh, and Kiriathaim. It is part of a list detailing which towns each tribe rebuilt or fortified east of the Jordan after the conquest of the region.

Key words

ve.Nei ("[the] descendants of", H1121G) — construct plural noun, linking the tribal name Reuben to the collective group performing the action; establishes the subject as a lineage, not the eponym himself.
ba.Nu ("they built", H1129) — qal perfect, third person plural. The perfect aspect marks the building as a completed action; the verb governs all three following place names through repeated object markers.
'et- ("", H0853) — direct object marker, repeated before each place name (chesh.Bon, 'el.'a.Le', kir.ya.Ta.yim), a grammatical device with no independent meaning that signals each town as a distinct direct object of ba.Nu.
chesh.Bon ("Heshbon", H2809) — proper noun, first object, one of the towns rebuilt.
kir.ya.Ta.yim ("Kiriathaim", H7156G) — proper noun with dual-form ending (-ayim), the third object of the verb.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence has a simple structure: subject (u-ve.Nei re.'u.Ven, "and the descendants of Reuben") + verb (ba.Nu, "they built") + three direct objects, each introduced by the object marker 'et. The repetition of 'et before each place name (chesh.Bon, 'el.'a.Le', kir.ya.Ta.yim) is a common feature of Biblical Hebrew list syntax, marking each item individually as receiving the verb's action rather than treating the list as a single compound object.

The verb ba.Nu ("they built", H1129) is in the qal perfect, indicating a completed act from the narrator's viewpoint. The Hebrew does not specify whether "built" means constructing anew or fortifying/rebuilding existing towns — the verb root itself covers both senses, and the specific nuance depends on context outside this verse. The subject ve.Nei re.'u.Ven ("descendants of Reuben") uses the construct form Nei, which grammatically ties the group's identity to the ancestor Reuben without naming him as the actor.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew verb ba.Nu ("they built") is rendered by the LXX as oikodomēsan ("they built") and by the Vulgate as aedificaverunt ("they built"), both matching the Hebrew sense closely. Some modern translations, such as SBLIBRE ("reconstruyeron," "they rebuilt"), interpret the same verb as indicating reconstruction rather than initial construction, a nuance not explicit in the Hebrew verb form itself, which simply denotes "to build" without distinguishing new construction from rebuilding.

This explanation describes the text using linguistic data; it adds no doctrine or confessional interpretation.