Numbers 7:78

Summary

The verse marks the twelfth day of the tribal offerings and identifies the leader presenting on that day as Ahira, son of Enan, representing the descendants of Naphtali.

Key words

• yom ("day", H3117G) — construct form appearing twice, first governing the numeral phrase ("day of twelve day[s]") to express the ordinal "twelfth day."
• sheneim 'asar ("two ten", H8147 + H6240) — a dual numeral combined with "ten," the standard Hebrew way of forming "twelve," here modifying yom.
• nasi' ("the leader", H5387A) — singular noun in apposition, identifying the office held by Ahira for this tribal group.
• le-vnei ("of the descendants of", H9005 + H1121A) — preposition le attached to the construct plural bnei, marking possession/belonging: "belonging to the sons of Naphtali."
• ben ("son of", H1121G) — construct singular noun forming the patronymic link between Ahira and Enan.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence opens with the temporal phrase be-yom sheneim 'asar yom, literally "on the day of twelve day," a construct chain used idiomatically to express the ordinal number "the twelfth day." This construction repeats the noun yom ("day") twice — once in construct form governing the numeral, and once as the counted noun itself — a pattern typical of Biblical Hebrew ordinal expressions rather than a redundancy.

The main clause identifies the officiant: nasi' le-vnei Naftali, "leader belonging to the descendants of Naphtali." The preposition le attached to vnei expresses the relationship of the nasi' to his tribal group, not physical descent but leadership function. The personal name Achira' is then given, followed by the patronymic construct ben 'Einan, "son of Enan," identifying his father. The verse contains no finite verb; it is a nominal sentence whose structure simply catalogs day, office, tribe, and personal identity in sequence, consistent with the repetitive listing pattern used throughout this chapter for each tribal leader.

Differences between versions

The LXX (Swete) renders the temporal phrase as τῇ ἡμέρᾳ τῇ δωδεκάτῃ ("on the twelfth day"), using a simple ordinal adjective rather than reproducing the Hebrew's double occurrence of "day." The Vulgate similarly uses Die duodecimo ("on the twelfth day"), also collapsing the Hebrew's construct-numeral phrase into a single ordinal expression. Both Greek and Latin thus smooth out the Hebrew's construct repetition of yom, which the word-by-word data shows as two distinct occurrences of the same noun in different grammatical roles.