He had forty sons and thirty sons' sons, who rode on seventy donkey colts: and he judged Israel eight years.
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The same verse in 3 English versions, stacked beneath the original-language interlinear above. Click any original word for its lexicon entry.
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He had forty sons and thirty sons' sons, who rode on seventy donkey colts: and he judged Israel eight years.
And he had forty sons and thirty nephews, that rode on threescore and ten ass colts: and he judged Israel eight years.
And 40 sons and 30 sons of sons were to him, riding on 70 donkeys. And he judged Israel eight years.
unfoldingWord Literal Text — © unfoldingWord, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Word-aligned USFM3 via Door43 (git.door43.org/unfoldingWord/en_ult).
Every available English version of this verse, each an independent rendering of the whole verse.
He had forty sons and thirty sons' sons, who rode on seventy donkey colts: and he judged Israel eight years.
He had forty sons and thirty grandsons, who rode on seventy donkeys. And he judged Israel eight years.
He had forty sons and thirty grandsons, who rode on seventy donkeys. And he judged Israel eight years.
And he had forty sons and thirty nephews, that rode on threescore and ten ass colts: and he judged Israel eight years.
And he had forty sons and thirty sons' sons, that rode on threescore and ten ass colts: and he judged Israel eight years.
And he had forty sons and thirty sons’ sons, that rode on threescore and ten ass colts: and he judged Israel eight years.
And he had fourty sonnes and thirtie nephewes that rode on seuentie assecoltes: and he iudged Israel eight yeeres.
And he had forty sons, and of them thirty grandsons, mounted upon seventy ass colts, and he judged Israel eight years:
and he hath forty sons, and thirty grandsons, riding on seventy ass-colts, and he judgeth Israel eight years.
and he has forty sons, and thirty grandsons, riding on seventy donkey-colts, and he judges Israel [for] eight years.
He had forty sons and thirty grandsons. They rode on seventy donkeys, and he judged Israel for eight years.
And 40 sons and 30 sons of sons were to him, riding on 70 donkeys. And he judged Israel eight years.
He had forty sons and thirty grandsons, who rode on seventy asses; and he judged Israel eight years.
He had forty sons and thirty sons’ sons who rode on seventy donkey colts. He judged Israel eight years.
And he had forty sons and thirty nephews, that rode on seventy ass colts: and he judged Israel eight years.
He had forty sons and thirty grandsons, who rode seventy donkeys. He led Israel as judge for eight years.
He had forty sons and thirty sons' sons who went on seventy young asses; and he was judge of Israel for eight years.
And he had forty sons and thirty sons' sons, that rode on threescore and ten ass colts; and he judged Israel eight years.
Literal Standard Version (2020), Covenant Press — licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API (eBible.org). Unlocked Literal Bible (unfoldingWord) — licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API (eBible.org). unfoldingWord Literal Text — © unfoldingWord, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Word-aligned USFM3 via Door43 (git.door43.org/unfoldingWord/en_ult). Free Bible Version, Dr. Jonathan Gallagher — licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API (eBible.org).
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These counts appear in no published source. They are computed here, from the morphology-tagged text and Lemma’s own curated glosses. What Lemma adds →
Notable vocabulary
The rarest word here is עֲיָרִ֑ם donkey H5895 — appearing just 10 times in the whole Hebrew Bible.
Shared distinctive vocabulary
עֲיָרִ֑ם donkey H5895 occurs in 8 verses of the Hebrew Bible. Also found in:
Grammatical profile
Verb forms
Repetition
A word recurs within this verse — often emphatic in Hebrew:
Hebrew & Septuagint length
In English translation the verse runs 20 words from the Hebrew and 19 from the Septuagint (LXX English) — closely comparable.
A rough comparison of the two English renderings, which tokenize alike — not a word-level alignment.
Word counts can differ between the Hebrew and the Greek without any difference in meaning — e.g. the Hebrew direct-object marker אֵת has no separate Greek word, and Greek often adds the article ὁ.
In the original languages it is 16 Hebrew tokens and 19 Greek tokens — but the two are counted differently (Hebrew bundles its prefixes and suffixes into one token; the Greek is in lemma form), so that isn’t a like-for-like length.
Topical passages linked to Judges 12:14 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge — connected by theme and wording, ordered by reader-vote popularity; previews shown in the World English Bible.
Cross-references courtesy of OpenBible.info (CC BY 4.0).
The same verse in the two great witnesses to the Old Testament, shown verse-for-verse.
These are two independent witnesses, not word-aligned to each other, and the Septuagint is shown in lemma (dictionary) form.
וַיְהִי ל֞וֹ אַרְבָּעִ֣ים בָּנִ֗ים וּשְׁלֹשִׁים֙ בְּנֵ֣י בָנִ֔ים רֹכְבִ֖ים עַל שִׁבְעִ֣ים עֲיָרִ֑ם וַיִּשְׁפֹּ֥ט אֶת יִשְׂרָאֵ֖ל שְׁמֹנֶ֥ה שָׁנִֽים
He had forty sons and thirty sons' sons, who rode on seventy donkey colts: and he judged Israel eight years.
World English Bible · Public Domain
καί εἰμί αὐτός τεσσαράκοντα υἱός καί τριάκοντα υἱός υἱός ἐπιβαίνω ἐπί ἑβδομήκοντα πῶλος καί κρίνω ὁ ἰσραήλ ὀκτώ ἔτος
And he had forty sons, and thirty grandsons, that rode upon seventy colts: and he judged Israel eight years.
LXX2012 (modern English Septuagint) · Public Domain
On this verse, Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers discusses the Septuagint’s reading. Read the note in Commentary ↓
Hebrew: Westminster Leningrad Codex (CC BY 4.0). Greek: Septuagint (public domain); English from LXX2012 (modern English Septuagint) (Public Domain). How the Septuagint differs from the Hebrew →
The Targum is the ancient Jewish Aramaic paraphrase of the Hebrew Scriptures — an interpretive translation, not the Hebrew text itself. Onkelos (literal) and Pseudo-Jonathan (expansive) render the Torah, and Jonathan the Prophets. Coverage is partial: where no permissively-licensed English translation exists for a verse, only the Aramaic is shown. This is verse-level text, not a word-by-word alignment to the Hebrew.
וַהֲוָה לֵיהּ אַרְבְּעִין בְּנִין וּתְלָתִין בְּנֵי בְנִין רְכִיבִין עַל שַׁבְעִין עַיְלִין וְדָן יַת יִשְׂרָאֵל תְּמַנְיָא שְׁנִין:
(no public-domain English translation for this verse)
Targum Jonathan — Aramaic: “Mikraot Gedolot” (public domain). English: “Sefaria Community Translation” (CC0 1.0 (public-domain dedication)); “London "Chaldee Paraphrase," 1871” (public domain). Text via Sefaria.
Teaching starters — assembled from the data on this page, not authored interpretation. Every prompt links to the verse data it draws on. Edit before teaching.
Judges, in the Historical, opens this verse with 16 words (13 distinct Hebrew lemmas). Its most distinctive word is ʻayir (“donkey”). A historical commentator’s framing appears above. Read the whole chapter for the surrounding context.
Commentary
Notes on Judges 12:14 from classic Christian and Jewish commentators (each source and its license shown beneath its notes). The classic Christian expositions comment on the surrounding passage and are grouped to its opening verse, so a note may address several verses; the Jewish commentaries on the Tanakh (Rashi and others) are per-verse, so they appear only where the commentator wrote on this verse.
Lemma curates 59 commentaries, every one of them public domain or Creative Commons licensed, each selected and text-cleaned for this edition rather than reprinted as found. About our sources →
Trapp's Complete Commentary
John Trapp
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Geneva Bible (1599)
Geneva Bible translators
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain. Text via Bolls.life.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Whedon's Commentary on the Bible
Daniel D. Whedon
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.