אֶ֚לֶף לַמַּטֶּ֔ה אֶ֖לֶף לַמַּטֶּ֑ה לְכֹל֙ מַטּ֣וֹת יִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל תִּשְׁלְח֖וּ לַצָּבָֽא
Of every tribe one thousand, throughout all the tribes of Israel, shall you send to the war.
World English Bible · Public Domain
Numbers 31:4
Hebrew (Westminster Leningrad Codex) Numbers 31:4 appears in the Hebrew Old Testament. The text above is from the Westminster Leningrad Codex. Each word links to its Strong’s number, a concise gloss, and parsing drawn from the Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible morphology. Click any word for its full Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB) entry.
English Translation
Of every tribe one thousand, throughout all the tribes of Israel, shall you send to the war.
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Compare translations 3
The same verse in 3 English versions, stacked beneath the original-language interlinear above. Click any original word for its lexicon entry.
Each is an independent rendering of the whole verse — the interlinear is not word-aligned to these translations.
Highlighted words mark where these versions differ — a whole-verse word diff, not a word-by-word alignment.
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World English Bible Public Domain
Of every tribe one thousand, throughout all the tribes of Israel, shall you send to the war.
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King James Version Public Domain
Of every tribe a thousand, throughout all the tribes of Israel, shall ye send to the war.
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unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
You shall send to the war for all the tribes of Israel, a thousand for a tribe, a thousand for a tribe.”
unfoldingWord Literal Text — © unfoldingWord, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Word-aligned USFM3 via Door43 (git.door43.org/unfoldingWord/en_ult).
Show all 18 translations
Every available English version of this verse, each an independent rendering of the whole verse.
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World English Bible Public Domain
Of every tribe one thousand, throughout all the tribes of Israel, shall you send to the war.
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Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Send into battle a thousand men from each tribe of Israel.”
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Majority Standard Bible Public Domain
Send into battle a thousand men from each tribe of Israel.”
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King James Version Public Domain
Of every tribe a thousand, throughout all the tribes of Israel, shall ye send to the war.
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American Standard Version (1901) Public Domain
Of every tribe a thousand, throughout all the tribes of Israel, shall ye send to the war.
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Revised Version (1885) Public Domain
Of every tribe a thousand, throughout all the tribes of Israel, shall ye send to the war.
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Geneva Bible (1599) Public Domain
A thousande of euery tribe throughout all the tribes of Israel, shall ye sende to the warre.
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Douay-Rheims (1899) Public Domain
Let a thousand men be chosen out of every tribe of Israel to be sent to the war.
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Young's Literal Translation Public Domain
a thousand for a tribe -- a thousand for a tribe, to all the tribes of Israel -- ye do send to the host.'
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Literal Standard Version CC BY-SA 4.0
one thousand for a tribe—you send one thousand for a tribe, of all the tribes of Israel, to the war.”
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Unlocked Literal Bible CC BY-SA 4.0
Every tribe throughout Israel must send a thousand soldiers to war.”
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unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
You shall send to the war for all the tribes of Israel, a thousand for a tribe, a thousand for a tribe.”
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Darby Bible Public Domain
Of every tribe a thousand, of all the tribes of Israel, shall ye send to the war.
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World Messianic Bible Public Domain
You shall send one thousand out of every tribe, throughout all the tribes of Israel, to the war.”
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Webster's Bible Public Domain
Of every tribe a thousand, throughout all the tribes of Israel, shall ye send to the war.
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Free Bible Version CC BY-SA 4.0
You are to contribute one thousand men from each Israelite tribe.”
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Bible in Basic English Public Domain
From every tribe of Israel send a thousand to the war.
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JPS Tanakh (1917) Public Domain
Of every tribe a thousand, throughout all the tribes of Israel, shall ye send to the war.'
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).
Word by word
More ways to search: Search by grammar → Find every occurrence → Compare this word →
Practice this passage: Drill this verse → Learn its vocabulary →
לַמַּטֶּ֔ה
maṭṭeh
H4294
“to/for the · staff”
Preposition, Determined + Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute
- Appears 252× in the Hebrew Bible
- First appears at Genesis 38:18
- Part of Speech
- Preposition + Noun
- Type
- Common
- Gender
- Masculine
- Number
- Singular
- State
- Absolute
Full BDB Definition
staff, branch, tribe
- staff, rod, shaft
- branch (of vine)
- tribe
- company led by chief with staff (originally)
- אֶ֚לֶף ʼeleph H505 “thousand” Adjective, Cardinal number, Both, Singular, Absolute
- לַמַּטֶּ֔ה maṭṭeh H4294 “to/for the · staff” Preposition, Determined + Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute
- אֶ֖לֶף ʼeleph H505 “thousand” Adjective, Cardinal number, Both, Singular, Absolute
- לַמַּטֶּ֑ה maṭṭeh H4294 “to/for the · staff” Preposition, Determined + Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute
- לְכֹל֙ kôl H3605 “to/for · all of” Preposition + Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Construct
- מַטּ֣וֹת maṭṭeh H4294 “staffs of” Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Construct
- יִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל Yisrâʼêl H3478 “Israel” Noun, Proper
- תִּשְׁלְח֖וּ shâlach H7971 “to send” Verb, Qal, Imperfect, 2nd Person, Masculine, Plural
- לַצָּבָֽא tsâbâʼ H6635 “to/for the · army” Preposition, Determined + Noun, Common, Both, Singular, Absolute
About this verse
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 →
- 9
- words
- 6
- distinct lemmas
- Pentateuch
- section
Grammatical profile
- 1 verb
- 6 nouns
- 2 adjectives
Verb forms
- תִּשְׁלְח֖וּ Qal · Imperfect
Repetition
Words recur within this verse — often emphatic in Hebrew:
Hebrew & Septuagint length
In English translation the verse runs 17 words from the Hebrew and 20 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 9 Hebrew tokens and 12 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.
Cross-references
3Topical passages linked to Numbers 31:4 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge — connected by theme and wording, ordered by reader-vote popularity; previews shown in the World English Bible.
- Leviticus 26:8 Five of you shall chase a hundred, and a hundred of you shall chase ten thousand; and your enemies shall fall before you by the sword.
- Judges 7:2 Yahweh said to Gideon, The people who are with you are too many for me to give the Midianites into their hand, lest Israel vaunt themselves against me, saying, My own hand has saved me.
- 1 Samuel 14:6 Jonathan said to the young man who bore his armor, Come, and let us go over to the garrison of these uncircumcised: it may be that Yahweh will work for us; for there is no restraint to Yahweh to save by many or by few.
Cross-references courtesy of OpenBible.info (CC BY 4.0).
Hebrew and Greek witnesses Masoretic Hebrew ↔ Greek Septuagint
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.
χίλιοι ἐκ φυλή χίλιοι ἐκ φυλή ἐκ πᾶς φυλή ἰσραήλ ἀποστέλλω παρατάσσω
Send a thousand of each tribe from all the tribes of the children of Israel to set themselves in array.
LXX2012 (modern English Septuagint) · Public Domain
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 →
Targum (Aramaic paraphrase)
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.
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Targum Onkelos Torah (Genesis–Deuteronomy)
אַלְפָא לְשִׁבְטָא אַלְפָא לְשִׁבְטָּא לְכֹל שִׁבְטַיָא דְיִשְֹׁרָאֵל תְּשַׁלְחוּן לְחֵילָא
(no public-domain English translation for this verse)
Targum Onkelos — Aramaic: “Onkelos Genesis” (public domain); “Onkelos Exodus” (public domain); “Onkelos Leviticus” (public domain); “Onkelos Numbers” (public domain); “Onkelos Deuteronomy” (public domain). English: “Sefaria Community Translation” (CC0 1.0 (public-domain dedication)); “J.W. Etheridge. The Targums of Onkelos and Jonathan Ben Uzziel on the Pentateuch. London: Longmans, Green, 1862” (public domain). Text via Sefaria.
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Targum Pseudo-Jonathan Torah (Genesis–Deuteronomy)
אַלְפָא לְשִׁבְטָא אַלְפָא לְשִׁבְטָא לְכָל שִׁבְטַיָא דְיִשְרָאֵל תְּשַׁדְרוּן לְחֵילָא
a thousand of each tribe of all the tribes of Israel send ye to the war.
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan — Aramaic: “Targum Jonathan on Genesis” (public domain); “Targum Jonathan on Exodus” (public domain); “Targum Jonathan on Leviticus” (public domain); “Targum Jonathan on Numbers” (public domain); “Targum Jonathan on Deuteronomy” (public domain). English: “The Targum of Jonathan ben Uzziel, trans. J. W. Etheridge, London, 1862” (public domain). Text via Sefaria.
Lesson kit
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.
Numbers, in the Pentateuch, opens this verse with 9 words (6 distinct Hebrew lemmas). Its most distinctive word is maṭṭeh (“staff”). A historical commentator’s framing appears above. Read the whole chapter for the surrounding context.
Discussion questions
- What does “staff” (maṭṭeh) contribute to the verse as a whole?
- Leviticus 26:8 shares this passage’s theme. How do the two illuminate each other?
- “staff” occurs 3× in this one verse. What is the effect of the repetition?
- The translations on this page render this verse differently — a whole-verse word diff, not a word-by-word alignment. What might account for the different wordings?
- The verb «תִּשְׁלְח֖וּ» is Qal Imperfect. How does its form color the action?
- Reading how The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges and John Gill's Exposition read this verse, where do the two commentators agree and where do they part?
Things to notice
- This verse counts 9 Hebrew ↔ 12 Greek words.
- These translations choose different wording for 4 words in this verse.
- “staff” occurs 3× in this single verse.
- 6 distinct Hebrew lemmas span 9 words in this verse.
Commentary
Notes on Numbers 31:4 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 →
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
John Gill's Exposition
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Rashi
Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki (Rashi)
Rashi on the Tanakh — English translations: “The Judaica Press complete Tanach with Rashi, translated by A. J. Rosenberg” (CC BY 4.0); “Pentateuch with Rashi's commentary by M. Rosenbaum and A.M. Silbermann, 1929-1934” (public domain); “The Metsudah Tanach series, Lakewood, N.J” (CC BY 4.0); and “The Book of Joshua, Metsudah Publications, 1997” (CC BY 4.0). Text via Sefaria.