וְנֶ֣פֶשׁ אָדָ֔ם שִׁשָּׁ֥ה עָשָׂ֖ר אָ֑לֶף וּמִכְסָם֙ לַֽיהוָ֔ה שְׁנַ֥יִם וּשְׁלֹשִׁ֖ים נָֽפֶשׁ
The persons were sixteen thousand; of whom Yahweh's tribute was thirty-two persons.
World English Bible · Public Domain
Numbers 31:40
Hebrew (Westminster Leningrad Codex) Numbers 31:40 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
The persons were sixteen thousand; of whom Yahweh's tribute was thirty-two persons.
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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
The persons were sixteen thousand; of whom Yahweh's tribute was thirty-two persons.
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King James Version Public Domain
And the persons were sixteen thousand; of which the LORD's tribute was thirty and two persons.
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unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
And the human lives were 16, 000, and their tax for Yahweh was 32 lives.
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
The persons were sixteen thousand; of whom Yahweh's tribute was thirty-two persons.
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Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
and 16,000 people, including a tribute to the LORD of 32.
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Majority Standard Bible Public Domain
and 16,000 people, including a tribute to the LORD of 32.
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King James Version Public Domain
And the persons were sixteen thousand; of which the LORD's tribute was thirty and two persons.
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American Standard Version (1901) Public Domain
And the persons were sixteen thousand; of whom Jehovah's tribute was thirty and two persons.
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Revised Version (1885) Public Domain
And the persons were sixteen thousand; of whom the LORD’S tribute was thirty and two persons.
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Geneva Bible (1599) Public Domain
And of persons sixtene thousand, whereof the Lordes tribute was two and thirtie persons.
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Douay-Rheims (1899) Public Domain
Out of the sixteen thousand persons, there fell to the portion of the Lord, thirty-two souls.
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Young's Literal Translation Public Domain
and the human beings `are' sixteen thousand, and their tribute to Jehovah `is' two and thirty persons.
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Literal Standard Version CC BY-SA 4.0
and of mankind [are] sixteen thousand, and their tribute to YHWH [is] thirty-two persons.
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Unlocked Literal Bible CC BY-SA 4.0
The persons were sixteen thousand women of whom Yahweh's tax was thirty-two.
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unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
And the human lives were 16, 000, and their tax for Yahweh was 32 lives.
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Darby Bible Public Domain
and the human persons were sixteen thousand, of whom the tribute for Jehovah was thirty-two persons.
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World Messianic Bible Public Domain
The persons were sixteen thousand, of whom the LORD’s tribute was thirty-two persons.
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Webster's Bible Public Domain
And the persons were sixteen thousand, of which the LORD'S tribute was thirty and two persons.
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Free Bible Version CC BY-SA 4.0
and 16,000 people, with a Lord's contribution of 32.
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Bible in Basic English Public Domain
And the number of persons was sixteen thousand, of which the Lord's part was thirty-two persons.
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JPS Tanakh (1917) Public Domain
And the persons were sixteen thousand, of whom the LORD'S tribute was thirty and two persons.
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 →
וּמִכְסָם֙
mekeç
H4371
“and · tax · their”
Conjunction + Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Construct + Suffix, Personal, 3rd Person, Masculine, Plural
- Appears 6× in the Hebrew Bible
- First appears at Numbers 31:28
- Part of Speech
- Conjunction + Noun
- Type
- Common
- Gender
- Masculine
- Number
- Singular
- State
- Construct
Full BDB Definition
computation, proportion to be paid, tribute, tax
- וְנֶ֣פֶשׁ nephesh H5315 “and · soul of” Conjunction + Noun, Common, Both, Singular, Construct
- אָדָ֔ם ʼâdâm H120 “man” Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute
- שִׁשָּׁ֥ה shêsh H8337 “six” Adjective, Cardinal number, Masculine, Singular, Absolute
- עָשָׂ֖ר ʻâsâr H6240 “teen” Adjective, Cardinal number, Masculine, Singular, Absolute
- אָ֑לֶף ʼeleph H505 “thousand” Adjective, Cardinal number, Both, Singular, Absolute
- וּמִכְסָם֙ mekeç H4371 “and · tax · their” Conjunction + Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Construct + Suffix, Personal, 3rd Person, Masculine, Plural
- לַֽיהוָ֔ה Yᵉhôvâh H3068 “to/for · LORD” Preposition + Noun, Proper
- שְׁנַ֥יִם shᵉnayim H8147 “two” Adjective, Cardinal number, Masculine, Dual, Absolute
- וּשְׁלֹשִׁ֖ים shᵉlôwshîym H7970 “and · thirty” Conjunction + Adjective, Cardinal number, Both, Plural, Absolute
- נָֽפֶשׁ nephesh H5315 “soul” 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 →
- 10
- words
- 9
- distinct lemmas
- Pentateuch
- section
Notable vocabulary
The rarest word here is וּמִכְסָם֙ tax H4371 — appearing just 6 times in the whole Hebrew Bible.
Shared distinctive vocabulary
וּמִכְסָם֙ tax H4371 occurs in 6 verses of the Hebrew Bible. Also found in:
Grammatical profile
- 5 nouns
- 5 adjectives
Repetition
A word recurs within this verse — often emphatic in Hebrew:
- וְנֶ֣פֶשׁ soul H5315 ×2
Hebrew & Septuagint length
In English translation the verse runs 12 words from the Hebrew and 15 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 10 Hebrew tokens and 14 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.
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.
καί ψυχή ἄνθρωπος ἑκκαίδεκα χιλιάς καί ὁ τέλος αὐτός κύριος δύο καί τριάκοντα ψυχή
and the persons, sixteen thousand, and the tribute of them to the Lord, thirty-two souls.
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)
וְנַפְשָׁא אֱנָשָׁא שִׁתָּא עֲשַׂר אַלְפִין וּנְסֵבְהוֹן קֳדָם יְיָ תְּלָתִין וּתְרֵין נַפְשִׁין
(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)
וּבְנַת נְשָׁא שִׁיתְּסַר אַלְפִין וּסְכוּם נְסִיבַתְהוֹן לִשְׁמָא דַיְיָ תְּלָתִין וּתְרֵין נַפְשָׁן
_ thirty-two.
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 10 words (9 distinct Hebrew lemmas). Its most distinctive word is mekeç (“tax”). A historical commentator’s framing appears above. Read the whole chapter for the surrounding context.
Discussion questions
- What does “tax” (mekeç) contribute to the verse as a whole?
- Numbers 31:28 shares the word «tax» with this verse. How do the two illuminate each other?
- “soul” occurs 2× 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?
Things to notice
- This verse counts 10 Hebrew ↔ 14 Greek words.
- These translations choose different wording for 18 words in this verse.
- “soul” occurs 2× in this single verse.
- 9 distinct Hebrew lemmas span 10 words in this verse.
Commentary
Notes on Numbers 31:40 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 →
Geneva Bible (1599)
Geneva Bible translators
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain. Text via Bolls.life.